Conspiracy
by PheonRen
Summary: AU. Eric finds a human dying behind Fangtasia. Someone is trying to frame him for the murder of humans, but why? Eric may discover secrets that run deeper into the Vampire world than he had ever imagined possible. M for graphic depictions. m/f Eric/OC.
1. Discovering Arin

_Notes: I do not own any of these characters. They belong to Charlaine Harris and Alan Ball/HBO._

_The setting is the end of Season 3, before Season 4. The incident that changes Eric never occurs._

_Warnings: Alternate Universe. Original character/Eric. Angst. Explicit descriptions: Gore, violence, m vamp/f human sex, torture, vampirism, romance, fluff  
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_Forgive me, I am not the biggest fan of the Sookie character. That's why I've chosen to AU this story. There is a multitude of Sookie/Eric fanfic, so I'm sure no one will miss one more. :p_

**Conspiracy**

**1. Discovering Arin**

Eric was bored, as usual. The usual conversations were happening all around him. The band was, although good, also not as new and special as they thought they were. The music was original, but then again, a lot of music was. Which made original music into nothing special.

So Eric sat in his chair and watched his bartender and cocktail waitresses rake in the cash. Getting richer wasn't a bad thing, yet at the same time, getting richer was boring, too. Another fool human approached him and thought she had to scream over the music to be heard. She could have whispered and he'd have heard her from across the room, or even outside.

He refused her boring request to be His with the flick of his wrist. No one who was eager to be his was worthy of doing so. He was exhausted with sniveling sycophants—the inevitable result of coming out of the coffin.

Despite his internal boasting of his ability to hear even a whisper outside over the music, Eric was surprised when he heard a soft, almost inaudible, "Helb!" He cocked his head, and a moment later, heard again, "Pleab helb! Oh god, sumbuggy!"

The door was open and he was out of it before any human in the bar registered that he'd moved. He was on the roof so fast that a few humans wondered if they were seeing things, but their minds could only register a blur.

Eric ignored their murmuring and focused on the scent of fresh human blood that assailed him. It came from behind the bar, in the delivery alley. He jumped down from the roof, his fangs automatically snapping out. The smell was delicious, like the humans of old before pollution and fluoride and gmo foods.

Unerringly, he followed the scent to the trash, finding her lying on the ground with some bags thrown over her, only a foot sticking out.

"Helb!" she cried again.

A sound behind him alerted him that Pam was there. "The humans have noticed that you're gone, Eric. One of them is an inspector from the Health Department."

"We have no violations, Pam. See to it."

Her fangs clicked out. "What is that smell? It's divine."

"I believe there's an injured human here," Eric answered. "Did you not hear her calling for help?"

"No," Pam answered, inspecting her fingernails. "But I'll be happy to help her if she smells like that."

"No, Pam. Not unless she asks for it," he told her, tossing another bag of garbage.

"Are you really going to root around in the trash like some vagabond?" she asked him with a disgusted sniff, even as he tossed another bag.

Eric ignored her. He had found the human. Dark brown hair, matted with that delicious blood, sprawled across another bag of trash. She was so badly beaten that he was surprised she could speak at all. In fact, her heartbeat had slowed so far that, if he'd been drinking from her, he would have stopped minutes ago.

She would not make it without his blood. But the blood was sacred, and she was simply a human.

"Oh, look, she's nearly dead, poor thing. Since she's dying anyway, can I finish her off? I wouldn't even need to bite her, she's already pincushioned." Pam laughed and walked toward him.

"Can't kill me," whispered the woman. "I'm dying soon anyway, but if you kill me, they'll have their excuse." Her voice was distorted and faint, and Eric realized her tongue was nearly bitten through. "Got to call the hospital or they'll blame you for my death."

"Oh, I know who she is," Pam said. "She's that anti-vampire blogger, Arin Jorgenson. Aren't you?"

"Not anti-vampire," murmured the woman. "But you wouldn't understand."

"You write against the VRA, don't you?" Pam demanded.

"Pam!" Eric reprimanded her. "Enough!" He looked back at the dying human. "Who's trying to blame us for your death?"

"The men who did this," she answered, and Eric realized that if he wanted to know more, he would have to save her. Her breath was rattling in blood-filled lungs. If he didn't save her, he wouldn't find out who was trying to set him up for murder.

Yet another 'benefit' of coming out of the coffin.

He broke open his wrist.

"Seriously? You're going to save this anti-vampire piece of trash?" Pam objected. "Just let the bitch die, and then call the cops. They'll still think you did your due diligence."

"I cannot let her die, and still get the information we need," Eric informed her with cold clarity.

"Oh fine, whatever. I guess it would be bad for business anyway if they find a dead human here. Just don't be surprised if she turns, she's as good as dead already." Pam turned around and strolled back into Fangtasia at speeds the human eye couldn't follow.

He held his wrist to her mouth. "Drink," he commanded.

"No," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. Then glamored her. "Drink," he commanded again.

"No."

He blinked. "No?"

"No," she whispered. "I don't want to be a vampire."

"You won't turn unless I sleep with you. Which I will not do. I do not need any more progeny. So drink," he commanded again.

"No."

He sighed. "You're very stubborn about saving your own life."

"Who says," she began, then coughed and convulsed slightly, "that I want to save it?"

"Well, I need information from you. So you can drink it willingly, or I'll force it down your throat," he told her. He didn't add that he would have glamored her, because obviously, for some reason, that wasn't working.

She sighed. "You won't believe what I tell you, anyway," she told him. "I'd rather just get it over with, if it's all the same to you."

He sighed. "Humans are irritating in the extreme," he told her. And generally predictable, as well. Why was this human eager to die? Most would do anything to escape the kind of pain that he knew she was in.

He grasped her jaw and forced it open. She fought, feebly of course, but with greater strength than he had expected. Ignoring her complaints and struggles, he poured blood into her mouth until he felt she'd had enough. Then he healed the wound he'd created on his arm and picked her up, belatedly realizing she'd fainted from her own struggles.

Quickly, he carried her into his office, where he laid her on the sofa and proceeded to lick the delicious blood from her body, sealing wounds with his saliva even as his blood did its work from the inside. He was surprised to find that she was in peak physical form, her body athletic and sleek.

When he was satisfied, he sat back and waited for her to come to. Someone had tried to frame him, and despite the absurdity and incompetence of their method, he wanted to know who it was.


	2. Q & A

**2. Q & A**

She crawled through the mental fog that surrounded her. Slowly, so slowly, she found her way to the bright light that burned overhead, and opened her eyes. Pain lingered in her body like an afterthought, and she groaned and ran her hand down her face.

"Now you will tell me who did this to you," a voice said.

Ah yes, the vampire that owned Fangtasia. Leave it to her to get herself hip-deep into this. "Who do you think did it? Did you check? Look for clues? Anything?"

He looked at her strangely. "Stay here. If you don't, I'll find you, and you'll regret it."

No doubt he meant it, but she didn't really care. There was little he could do to her that frightened her on any real level.

He was back before she'd even finished sitting up. She raised an eyebrow in question. "Find anything?"

He paced back and forth. "No," he answered her. The fact clearly worried him.

"Because the only one who could drop me off like that and leave no traces for you to find is a vampire." She wasn't guessing.

"Vampires do not beat people, we eat people," the blond man argued with her.

"Unless you're trying to fool humans into thinking that other humans did it. That's why I told you to call the hospital. My dying declaration that a vampire besides you did it to me would have been equal to an official legal testimony."

"Why?"

"That's the law—"

He cut her off. "No. Why would a vampire do this?"

"You're the Sheriff, aren't you? With you out of the way, a new power-base can be established here."

He had grown still. He stared at her intensely. "How do you know that?"

"Why do you think they used me in particular to try to frame you?" she pointed out. Then she answered her own question for him. "I know too much."

"Then why do you not expose all of it that you know? Most humans would. Especially anti-vampire humans."

She sighed and dropped her head into her hands, snaring her fingers in blood-caked hair. "Ew." She shuddered. Then returned to the subject, staring at her bloody hands. "I told you before, I'm not anti-vampire. I'm anti-AVL. The American Vampire League is not what you think it is. Think of me not so much as anti-vampire, but more as pro-human, and a lot of things will make more sense."

He shook his head. "I've read some of your stuff. You're crazy."

She smiled. Vampires were so much more human than they thought they were.

"Do I amuse you?" he asked her, glaring.

"How old are you?" she asked him, ignoring the question for a moment.

"A thousand or so. Give or take. Why?" he cocked his head at her.

"Wow, a thousand. Impressive," she answered him.

"I do amuse you," he told her, obviously surprised at the observation.

"Not particularly. I'm more amused at the idea of a thousand year old vampire that has somehow managed to miss the power plays going on all around him for all this time."

He was in front of her face in the blink of an eye, startling her. "Be careful, human." He stressed the last word like an epithet. "You are irritating me, and that's very foolish."

She shrugged. She was as good as dead already, and she knew it. Especially now that killing her had already failed and she knew a vampire had been the one to try to do it. His threats were meaningless to her.

"You don't want to kill me," she told him.

His fangs clicked out. "Every vampire wants to kill you, you are a human."

"Ah, but you're intrigued. A vampire has tried to kill me, by trying to make it look like a human was trying to frame you. You want to know why."

"I do?" he asked, stepping back and looking at her with a strange, hooded look on his face. "What makes you think so?"

She shrugged. "You're a thousand years old. That means you can't be a complete idiot."

"You're easily amused, aren't you?" he asked her.

She sighed. "I usually amuse myself, actually. So yes, I'm easily amused, especially considering that no one else ever seems to get my jokes."

"I do not like you," he told her.

"Welcome to Planet Earth," she told him. "Nobody else likes me, either."

"Perhaps you should fix yourself, then."

She stood up, flexing. "Don't sweat it, big guy. I'll be dead before the night is through." She headed for the door. "Thanks for everything."

He was at the door with his arm holding it closed before she could take more than two steps toward it. "You are not leaving," he told her. "You have not answered my questions."

She wanted to laugh out loud, straight in his face, but restrained herself to a perfectly neutral face. He scowled at her ferociously. She nearly lost the battle to keep a straight face.

"Perhaps you should ask them, if you want them answered."

"What's funny about that?" he asked her.

She raised an eyebrow. "Did I laugh?"

"You're amused," he told her.

"Says who?" she grinned.

"I can feel you. This situation is not in the least amusing, yet you are strongly amused. Very good at hiding it, though. If I couldn't feel you, even I would never know."

Discomfort swirled through her, and he smiled, his fangs snapping out of his predatory, hungry grin. "Now that's more like it," he told her.

"You had questions?" she prodded.

His fangs snapped away with an audible 'click'.

"What vampire did this?"

"I don't know. I don't know him."

"Why did he do it?" He crossed his arms and stared at her closely.

"I can't be certain, but I believe it is to frame you. He thought the police would know it was a vampire because of the excess strength it would take to do what he did to me. But I believe he also thought that no vampire would believe a vampire did it, because he didn't use his fangs to drink from me and he didn't drain me completely."

"Why would a vampire try to frame me as if a human were trying to frame me? That makes no sense."

"Well, I could tell you what I think, but you wouldn't believe me. No one ever does. Besides, we don't have all night, and I wouldn't know where to begin even if I did try to explain it. Suffice it to say that someone wants you removed from the equation. Either because of something you know or are, or because they need this power base for something." She shrugged. "Either way, I doubt this will be the last attempt."

"Why you?"

"Because I know too much. Two bats with one net," she replied. The vampire joke amused her, and he glared. She shrugged and grinned back. Why hide it if he could feel it?

"You are a singularly irritating human," he informed her.

"Oh, no, really?" she replied, deadpan. "I've never heard that one before."

"Really? Because I cannot imagine a minute going by that you do not hear it."

"Ah, apparently sarcasm doesn't translate well across this thing you've got going on with me," she told him.

"You have had a great deal of my blood. Your emotions are irritatingly strong."

She shrugged at him, and pulled a wry face. "I told you to call the hospital and let me die. Your own fault."

"I do not obey humans," he practically snarled at her.

The comment amused her, and he glared again.

"You have an entirely inappropriate sense of humor."

"Are you done with the questions you're not asking? I'd like to go home now."

"No, I am not. You are irritating and irrational. Every question I have asked you, you have answered with obfuscations and smugness. You are not going to go out and get yourself killed before I have some real answers."

"Fine. Can I at least use the computer, then?"

"No."

"Why not?" now it was her turn to scowl at him.

"You are not going to blog this incident. The blood is sacred."

"Yes, I know," she answered. "Whoever did this will know you saved me, because I'm not dead. Do you think that I need to blog that for him to figure it out?"

He was in front of her again instantly. His hands gripped her shoulders with implacable firmness. "Vampires know. But humans do not. You will not inform them, or they will hunt vampires for our blood."

"I knew. Others know. Humans have hunted vampires for as long as vampires have hunted humans," she told him.

He started to speak and she forestalled him. "Listen, mister. I've been blogging about vampires and I've known about this for years. Do you really think that if I've kept your secrets this long, I'm going to suddenly start shouting them from the rooftops?"

He stood back up, looking down at her. "Yes, why have you kept some of our secrets, and not others?"

"I have no desire to harm vampires, so long as they don't harm me," she told him truthfully. "I am blogging to protect humans, not hurt your kind."

"Sometimes it is the same thing."

She shrugged. "As you protect your kind, I protect mine. The average vampire is a threat, I won't deny it, but mainly to individuals. There is a cabal at the top that is a threat to humanity as a whole. As well as to vampires."

He scoffed. "There is no cabal," he waved the idea away.

Disappointment and disgust filled her. "Now, you _know_ that's not true," she told him.

He blinked and told her, "Stay here." Then he was out of the room before she could even form a thought to reply.


	3. When Dreams come

**3. When Dreams Come**

He signaled Pam from the door and she followed him out of the main bar into the basement, where he stalked back and forth.

"Tell me about this human and her blogs," he demanded in Swedish.

"Well, it's standard crackpot conspiracy theorist stuff, just with vampires," she answered him, shrugging. "Just stupid shit."

"Pam," he warned her.

She rolled her eyes. "Fine, Eric. She claims that the purpose of the AVL is to create human farms, and enslave vampires."

Eric laughed. "Enslave us?"

Pam raised an eyebrow. "You see? Stupid shit."

He shook his head and gestured slightly. "Continue."

"She claims that the reason why the AVL is demanding vampire registration is to restrict vampire autonomy. That if the vampires become enslaved, they will be used as a sort of special forces to further enslave humans to some elite cabal of vampires."

Eric grinned. "What, they're not reptillians?"

"Apparently vampires are the worst boogeymen she could come up with. She claims that the same group of vampires has been working for seven millennia through technology, religion, etc. to bring the world to the position where they can seize total control." She was tapping her foot impatiently.

Eric laughed again. "There are no seven thousand year old vampires."

"Well, for what it's worth, she's been saying this since before we came out of the coffin."

"She knew about vampires before? How?" He started pacing again, pondering why someone would have believed these things before the great revelation.

She shrugged. "Same cut and dried shit, Eric. She claims her family was killed by vampires and that she couldn't be glamored out of her memories. The police got there before he could kill her, blah blah blah."

"Does she know why?"

"Why what?" Pam looked at him like he was stupid.

He flitted across the room and had her by the neck against the wall before she could react, even with vampire senses. "Why she could not be glamored," he demanded of her.

She glared at him for a moment. Then she sighed. "She says she's autistic. She says that autism is a genetic mutation designed to make humans better able to combat the 'vampire threat' among other increasing threats to humans."

"Evolution?" Eric pondered the possibility. Godric had specifically lamented that vampires, after all the centuries they had existed, did not evolve. "Hmmm..." He would have to think on it further.

"It's all stupid, Eric. Why are you wasting time on this?"

"I could not glamor her."

"You tried?" She looked surprised, a look he didn't get to see on her face very often.

"And failed."

She already looked bored again. "Fascinating." It was said with all the excitement of a sleeping turtle.

A sudden powerful wave of emotion struck him, and he was drowning in it before he realized it. His fangs snapped out of their own accord. He cocked his head, listening to the woman in the room above him. Her heart beat was slow and steady and her breathing only slightly elevated.

"Eric?" Pam asked, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

"She is asleep, I think."

"So?" Pam was dismissive, disinterested.

"She is..." he struggled to get his fangs under control and fought the surge of his blood to his groin, "...aroused."

Pam looked down and back up to meet his eyes. "Really? I can't imagine about what she might be dreaming."

"Her lust is..." he shifted his head, fighting the tide again, "potent."

"Well." Pam's eyebrow lifted and speculation shifted across her face, "I would offer to take care of her for you, but she was just lying in the garbage heap."

"If I wanted her 'taken care of', Pam, I would certainly not need your assistance in doing so."

"Hmm, pity. She looked like she might clean up nice, under the sewage. Maybe I can give her some of my blood, too, if she's that horny."

"She is very attractive to look at, but she is the most annoying human I have ever laid eyes on."

"Worse than Sookie?"

"Much worse than Sookie. Sookie is at least likeable and can take things seriously. This one finds everything amusing. And I do not like the way she feels towards me." At last he got his fangs under control. They snapped back into place.

"Really?" Pam's avid curiosity was hidden behind a disinterested veneer that didn't fool him in the least.

"She... disapproves of me. Or, perhaps more accurately, she is disappointed in me. I think she thinks I am stupid. It is not a feeling I am fond of."

Then, as quickly as he had gotten them under control, his fangs snapped back out as another surge of raw sexuality struck him and dragged him into its current. He was ready to grab anything at all and hump it like a dog.

"Send one of the dancers down here," he commanded Pam abruptly.

"Which one?" Pam drawled in her usual sarcastic tone.

"Any of them, I don't care!"

"Fine." She flounced up the stairs in an obvious snit. Eric didn't care.

The fake redhead that came tottering down the stairs was drunk, but she was shaved and clean. She would do, Eric decided. Stripping her unceremoniously and securing the cuffs on her arms, he drove into her. Apparently, the thought of what he was going to do to her had been enough to prepare her, because he found her wet enough to slide right in.

But even drinking from her while he fucked her was distinctly unsatisfying, and he began to realize why after some time had passed.

He pulled out of her and sent her away curtly. As she staggered up the stairs, he wiped his mouth of the blood he'd taken from her in his lust. Standing naked in the basement, he groaned. He could not be satisfied because it wasn't his own desire. The woman in his office was unsatisfied, thwarted.

He slammed his fist into the wall so hard that flakes of broken concrete dropped from it. He was going to have to control this, or she would be his undoing.

Almost as the thought concluded, the feeling of lust lessened and the feeling of being thwarted increased. This 'Arin' was like a teenager. She felt fully. Her frustration was complete. Her amusement strong. Her lust... well.

Her lust for sex was as strong as his own lust for blood, and he'd never felt anything that strong from any of his humans, ever.

He dressed and, with great difficulty, got his fangs under control. His straining erection, he ignored. He stalked through the bar to his office.

She lay, still sleeping, on his sofa. He stood over her, brooding. She knew something. He didn't know what it was, but she knew something.

Yet he couldn't keep her anywhere near him. She was a danger to his stability. Her powerful, mercurial emotions set him on edge. He dared not admit it even to himself, but she challenged his self control even beyond the boundaries of her untamed sexuality.

He sat down and picked up the landline. "Toby," he said when the man at the other end answered. "Do some checking up. Give me everything you can find on Arin Jorgenson."

"Arin Jorgenson? Isn't she that anti-vampire nutjob?"

"Just do it."

"Yes sir." The line clicked and went dead.

He stared at Arin. She was sleeping quietly, all emotion gone quiescent for the moment.

He flicked on the computer and used Google, a rare and somewhat uncomfortable experience for him. He plugged her name in, and quickly found he'd spelled it wrong. But Google politely corrected him, and he found her blog.

Her basic philosophy seemed to center around the idea of vampires being 'tagged' and cataloged like humans already were, and why humans should care about it. To his surprise, it seemed like both sides of the debate hated her. The comments were vitriolic. One instructed her to kill herself immediately for being a traitor to the human race. The next one right under it proclaimed her to be a monster who was trying to stir up lynch mobs again vampires.

Yet the critical, reasonable part of him felt that she was on neither side as much as she seemed to be trying to get both sides to see a common enemy elsewhere.

A common enemy that he knew couldn't possibly exist.

It was clear she was both passionate and certain, however. Her arguments were well-stated and some of her conclusions were quite unusual. He found that she was able to put old information together in new ways.

But her conclusions were radical. Especially since it seemed that she claimed that some of them were daywalkers. Vampires simply could not daywalk. If one could, he or she would be nearly in-detectible and indestructible.

Where her theories fell apart, though, was that vampires all knew about each other. He could sense when a vampire was more powerful than him. They all could. If anyone had ever encountered a seven thousand year old vampire, everyone would know about it. It was that big of a deal.

He sighed and shook his head.

She meant well. That much was obvious to him. Yet her arguments were dangerous if anyone believed them. And she was in danger because in this, she had no allies on either side. She'd had no end of death threats on her blog, and that was only on the first page.

He realized that she had expected the attack. Perhaps that was why she felt no hate when she spoke of the vamp who had attacked her. She knew that both sides wanted her dead. Yet there were countless crackpots on both sides that people wanted to kill.

Was there some truth to her ramblings?

He shook his head. She was dangerous. She had him wondering, and that was bad. He was a thousand year old vampire, he knew how the world worked. Her blog and her insane theory wasn't it.


	4. Bait

**4. Bait**

"She still smells like garbage."

It was the woman's voice. Arin sat up, stretching.

"Hmm, you're right, though. She does clean up nice."

Arin looked the drawling, bored woman up and down. "I'd hardly say I'm cleaned up. I'm wearing more blood than I have in my veins."

The vampire woman grinned and her teeth flicked out. "I could get rid of the rest for you."

"Pam," the blond man said warningly from behind his desk.

Arin grinned at him.

"You should really remember that we can kill you any time," Pam told her.

She shrugged. "You won't."

Pam dragged her up by the neck.

"Impertinent," she said, sniffing at Arin.

"Seriously?" Arin rolled her eyes. "Fuck off already."

"That's saucy, coming from someone dangling from the end of my arm," Pam told her.

"Pam," he said again, still sitting calmly behind the desk.

Pam put her down, then turned around. "You're right, Eric. She's beyond irritating."

"I think she likes me," Arin told Eric.

"Do you take anything at all seriously?" he asked her, leaning back in his chair.

"Not that I recall."

"Did you take it seriously when you got beaten within an inch of your life?" Pam asked her, snarky and sharp.

"Seriously? Bitch, nobody asked you."

Pam smirked. "You mad?" she asked.

"She's not mad, Pam. She's laughing at you."

"She sounds mad," Pam argued.

"She's not mad. Your comment didn't even effect her."

"So you got beat nearly to death, and you're not mad about it?" Pam's eyes raked Arin with disbelief.

"Resigned," Eric said thoughtfully.

Arin looked at him. "What?"

"You feel resigned. Really, your emotions are a train wreck. I can't imagine how you keep them from showing all the time. I expect you to be giggling constantly."

She shrugged. "You should have let me die."

"Go kill yourself if you want to die so badly."

"Okay," she told him.

She got almost to the door that time, before he was in front of her. She looked up, up, up into his eyes. "No," he told her.

She grinned. "Why not?"

He scowled at her. "You are bait."

"I don't feel much like a worm," she told him.

"This isn't funny."

"I think it is."

"You think everything is funny, so you don't count," Eric responded.

"She's not funny," Arin answered him, pointing at Pam. "She's kind of bitchy. And old."

"Thank you," Pam told her.

"Anytime." Arin squelched a grin.

"She doesn't like you," Eric told Arin.

"You don't, either," Arin told him. "But you still won't let me go."

"I told you. You are bait."

"I heard you," Arin went back to the sofa. "I think you like me. You want to keep me for a pet."

"You are attempting to goad me," Eric looked thoughtful as he said it, his eyes narrowed. "Why?"

Arin sighed and leaned back. "Force of habit, I guess. I'm tired and I just want to go home and sleep for a week. You won't let me go, won't give me clean clothes, and won't feed me."

"You have not asked."

"Were you raised in a barn? Don't you always feed guests and offer them clean clothes? Seems like the right thing to do, doesn't it?"

"You are not a guest, you are-"

"Bait. I know. Does bait have to starve and wear filthy clothes?"

"Is there anyone who has met you that didn't want to kill you within a minute of meeting you?" Pam asked, her voice drawling and mildly irritated.

"Oh, I don't think so. I think that's pretty much universal," Arin answered her. "It's my special talent."

"How has she survived this long?" Pam asked Eric.

Arin answered when he simply grunted, having gone back to looking at the computer screen, "Because humans don't kill everyone that merely irritates them. It's bad manners."

"I am a vampire, biscuit, I do not need manners."

"Will you two stop? Your petty bickering is pathetic." He clicked the mouse, not looking at them as he spoke.

"Well, control your pet," Pam told him.

"Go get her something to wear," Eric commanded.

Pam sighed and walked out.

"Do you think you can stay here while I get you something to eat?"

"Sure."

She hadn't finished the word before he was out and the door was closing softly behind him.

Sighing, she tried to shake the feeling that had been left over from her dream.

The dream she'd had, had left her with a deep, unfulfilled longing for the vampire who had saved her. Feelings not unfamiliar, but completely unacceptable.

To distract herself, she pulled out her phone and quickly sent a text message to her friend Janette. She'd been scheduled to have lunch with her, so she felt it only courteous to tell her she was okay but wouldn't be making it.

The door snapped open just as she hit SEND, and the phone was snatched and crushed.

"Hey!" she objected. "What the hell?"

"I told you that you couldn't use the computer, didn't I? Did you think to go online behind my back with the phone?"

She gave him a disgusted look. "I was texting my friend that I wouldn't be at lunch today."

"Oh." He looked chagrined.

"You owe me a phone."

He sighed and handed her a burger. "Okay."

"Really? Cause you know, I really want a Droid..." He looked pissed, so she sighed. "Or just the same make and model would be fine. Not that you can tell what it used to be anymore."

He was standing altogether too close to her. She sat down to eat and found herself eye level with his groin. The memory of her dream flashed in her mind and she took a bite of hamburger to still the riotous emotions that ran through her.

His fangs snapped out and she stopped chewing to stare up at him.

"Stop that!"

Around a mouth full of food, muffled by the burger, she said, "What? I ain't doin' nuffin'."

"Stop... you know."

She chewed, swallowed. "I'm not doing anything! Just eating!"

"How can you sit there and eat when you feel like that?"

"Like what?" Then she realized that he probably felt her reaction to his proximity and her dream. She blushed and looked away. "Because I'm hungry."

Realizing he could feel her desire for him, she fought to tamp it down. She took a few deep breaths, feeling slightly dizzy. She wished he'd move away.

"Eric?" Pam asked from the doorway.

Arin looked up to find him staring at her with a predatory look that only increased her discomfort and desire.

"Do not let her leave," Eric told Pam. Then he whisked out the door.

"What did you do to him?" Pam asked her, handing her a dress that was pretty much nothing like anything Arin would ever have worn in her entire life.

"What is this, a dishcloth?"

"It's a dress, biscuit. I suggest you get it on, if you don't want to start smelling like carrion." She crossed her arms. "Now, what did you do to Eric?"

"Nothing. I was just eating."

"Right." Her voice was laced with sarcasm and doubt so thick that Arin could have traded in her burger and had something even more substantial to eat.

"He should have let me die."

"Why are you so eager to die?"

"I'm not, actually," Arin told her. "I just think he has opened up a lot of trouble for himself. Maybe more than he can handle."

"Eric can take care of himself," Pam told her, still sharp and pragmatic. "I'd worry more for yourself, if I were you."

"So where am I going to spend the day?"

"Here," Pam told her.

"Here? Without using the computer, nothing to read, not even Cable?"

"If you get too bored, you can diddle yourself. It's what I do when I'm bored."

Arin laughed.

"I wasn't joking," Pam told her.

Arin struggled to put on a straight face. "No, of course not. I'll take that under advisement."

"You do that," Pam answered and walked out the door.

Arin looked around the office. Finally, she spotted a shirt hanging on the back of the door to a small closet that hung slightly open.


	5. Protection Plan

**5. Protection Plan**

"You should kill her," Pam told Eric.

"No."

"Your fangs are snapping out like a newborn's, Eric." Pam was impatient, irritated.

"I know that, Pam. Do you think you need to tell me? I've just never experienced such intense emotion before. Do you think you could do better?"

"Yes," Pam answered, crossing her arms. "I'd have fucked her silly the first time and then killed her."

"The AVL doesn't allow-"

"Fuck the AVL. You and I both know that she can disappear and never be found or linked with us in any way. No one even knows she was here."

"Pam, I am not going to kill her."

"Why? And don't tell me that she's bait. It wasn't her they were after, if you believe her, it was you."

"So we go by the word of humans now? We don't know which one of us they were trying to hurt—although all signs point to both of us." Eric snapped his fangs back in; Arin had gotten her emotions under control.

"You know, actually, considering how strong her feelings are, she gets them under wraps pretty quickly."

Pam laughed, a short, disbelieving sound. "You almost sound like you like her."

Eric shrugged. "That's pushing it pretty far."

"Eric, she's a risk. A completely unnecessary one. Worse, she's an agitator. She's posting all kinds of whacky theories to that website of hers, inciting people against vampires."

"Actually, she only seems to have one theory. And although it's whacky enough, she's remarkably consistent with it."

"Does it matter? She's a risk, Eric. You need to think about what you're doing here. She's not your responsibility."

Eric flashed over to stand directly in front of her. When she took a startled step backwards, he followed.

"Remind me, Pam, of when I gave you permission to decide and dictate to me what my responsibilities are."

"I'm sorry."

"I have made my decision. You may deal with that appropriately, regardless of your feelings about it, or you may leave. You'll notice that dictating to me is not on the list of options."

"Of course," Pam responded, looking away.

The sign of submission appeased him, and he paced.

"What are you going to do with her? She can't stay here?" She phrased it as a question, still clearly sensing that he was not in the mood for her to point things out to him that he already knew.

"I called Alcide to stay with her today. Tonight, I will help her get some things from her house. I bought Sookie's house, so I'll take her to stay there for a while until I sort things out."

"I do have my own house, you know," Arin said from the top of the stairs. "It's got a security alarm, even."

"What are you doing?" Eric demanded. Her hair was wet and she was wearing one of his shirts. He turned to Pam. "And didn't I tell you to give her something to wear?"

Pam opened her mouth to object, but Arin cut her off. "She gave me a couple of washcloths with strings on them. This is okay for now."

"What are you doing?"

"Checking the place out. If I'm going to be here all day, I just as well look around."

"I gave her a dress." At Eric's raised eyebrow, Pam added, "It was a strappy dress."

"The shirt is dirty," Eric began.

"That's okay. It doesn't have any blood on it." She held it up to her nose and sniffed it, "It just smells like you."

Eric's fangs snapped out.

Pam rolled her eyes. "Really? Again, Eric?"

"It's not me, it's her!"

"Stop being such a baby!" Pam chided him.

"I didn't do anything!" Arin objected at the same time.

Alcide's voice came from behind her. "Am I interrupting anything?" He walked around the corner and saw Eric with his fangs out. "Whoa!"

"No," Eric told him, "you are not. Alcide, meet Arin Jorgenson. Arin, Alcide." His fangs clicked back and he felt intense relief.

After exchanging "Nice to meet you", they shook hands.

"You smell nice," Alcide told Arin. "It's almost like you're wearing pheromone-based perfume."

To Eric's intense frustration, Arin radiated pleasure, and blushed. "Thank you. It's unfortunate, though, because eventually I tend to open my mouth and ruin the effect entirely."

"Okay," Alcide said, obviously having no response to that. "I guess we'll have to wait and see. You're doing fine so far."

Arin dimpled at him, and Eric cleared his throat. "Keep her safe, Alcide, and keep your hands off of her."

"Oh, right, right," Alcide responded. "Of course."

"Oh, no. No no," Arin interjected. "It's not like that."

To Eric's complete fury, his fangs snapped back out as a surge of embarrassment and lust struck him from the general vicinity of the steps.

"I told you to kill her," Pam told him.

"I did, too, actually," Arin told him. At his glare, she backed up and trotted up the steps.

Alcide stood on the steps for a minute, looking at Eric in confusion. "I guess I'll just..." he pointed after Arin and escaped the room.

"What is wrong with you?" Pam demanded, turning on Eric the second he was gone. "She can't possibly be getting aroused every five seconds!"

"You smelled her," Eric answered, well aware that was one point that Pam couldn't argue with.

"Hmm, yes," Pam sniffed the air slightly. "Like honey and sunflowers. The way women used to smell." Her fangs popped out, and she clapped her hand over them.

"The blood covered it before," Eric told her. "Now it's enough by itself to do it."

"Well, at least you have an excuse, I guess," Pam answered. "Since every other vampire in the room is going to react the same way."

"And, apparently, so are werewolves," Eric stated, glaring at the doorway.

"Feeling a little possessive, are we?"

Eric didn't bother to reply as he walked up the stairs.

"I'd really rather stay at my own house," Arin told him when he entered the bar, several hours empty of patrons. "It's finally finished, and I just moved in last month. Plus I really prefer to eat all organic whenever I can."

"Where is it?"

"Just outside Bon Temps," Arin told him.

"We'll go look at it tonight and I'll decide then," he told her.


	6. Uninvited Guests

**6. Uninvited Guests**

"Hey, aren't you the one that wrote 'Where the Sun Sleeps'? With the movies and everything?" Alcide asked.

"Yeah, I did," Arin answered, pleased to be recognized for something tonight besides 'Aren't you that vampire hater?'.

"I've seen all four movies. When will the fifth one be out?"

"Ah, you know I can't tell you. My publicist would kill me. Confidentially, though, I can tell you that they've begun production already."

They chatted for some time about her book series and the movie deal. It had been enough to afford her a beautiful new home just outside of Bon Temps, as well as a few animals to raise on the few acres she'd purchased. She'd been living on a farm while she waited for it to be built, so she'd already transitioned to a lifestyle predominantly consisting of organic food.

"Are you done writing?" he asked her, bringing her mind back to the subject. "Or will there be more books?"

"I've started another series." She chuckled at the eager look on his face. "No, I can't tell you what it's about, except that it continues on Vinceroyal." Vinceroyal as the name of the planet her fantasy novels took place on.

They talked for quite some time, and Arin was surprised to find that Alcide was a fan. He was more than a passing fan, also, because a few hours later found him arguing lore with her until he suddenly realized exactly who he was arguing it with. It was the first time that Arin had gotten to chat about her books with someone who wasn't a publicist, an editor, or otherwise involved in its production or the creation of movies.

It was distinctly satisfying, and she found herself even more attracted to him than she'd been from the beginning. Though, considering she'd had probably all of five 'boyfriends' over her life and been asked on more insincere dates than she could remember, she had no idea what he thought of her outside of being the writer of some of his favorite books.

All five of the guys she'd tried to get closer to had shown themselves to dislike her personality relatively quickly, while trying to put up with it to get down her pants anyway. None of them had succeeded not only because she had standards but because she had small amount of pride left... she wouldn't give in just to sate her own desires when the other person hated her as a human being.

Now she wondered if it was possible that this man might like her. But her self esteem was gone, so she didn't consider the possibility very long. She knew, true enough, that she was pretty. Probably, if she were to really think about it, and dress less conservatively, she could be a knockout.

Life, so far, had shown her though, that it did no good to be pretty if everybody hated your personality. She'd tried to change it, but only seemed to make things worse the harder she tried to be likeable. She was just as alone as she would be if she were ugly, except perhaps some people might then have been friends with her just out of pity.

So for the better part of the day, she basked in having his attention. If she thought more than she should have about a blond vampire, she forgave herself. She knew that at least one of the effects of "V" was a heightened sexual response to the vampire it came from, including dreams of him or even her.

Her fascination in that department, she was well aware, was even more unrequited than usual. Every time he was around her, his fangs came out and he stared at her like she was a particularly odious specimen of insect. Or a particularly delicious cut of steak, she wasn't sure which.

The hours passed quickly, and Alcide was easy to chat with. At last, though, the events of the night before caught up to her and she yawned. "I'm going to go lay down on the sofa. I hope you'll forgive me, I... it was a tough night."

He leaped up as she got up, and she smiled at his archaic manners. A lot of women, she knew, frowned on it, but she still loved to be treated like a woman, not a 'female' or a man. She wasn't a heifer, she was a human woman. You called cattle 'female' and 'male' and she was of the firm belief that the so-called Elites were trying to get people to see each other as exactly that—cattle. So the gesture of courtesy went beyond something she liked, to being something that restored her faith that some humans still saw each other as people, not inventory.

Little did she know, of course, that he was no longer human and hadn't been for much of his life.

So, peacefully ignorant, she went to rest, comforted in her belief that chivalry wasn't dead... and concerned for him in case of any kind of attack. They'd probably come in a group, and what chance did he have?

Eric should have let her die when he had the chance. She feared she'd get this kind, handsome man killed. Or Eric himself. Her mind shied away from the thought, preferring sleep instead. The darkness of sleep dragged her in, a willing victim to its embrace.

It was early evening, just before the sun went down, when a crash in the front of the bar awakened her. Startled, she sat up with a gasp. Barefoot and wearing only a shirt, she still thought nothing of running out to see what was happening.

Three men had pushed their way into the bar and were attacking Alcide.

Arin hadn't taken self defense lessons for nothing. Nor did she work out on a regular basis just to look good, either. She picked up a stool and raced across the bar to crash it down on one of the men who held Alcide captive so that the third could beat him freely. The guy dropped like an especially cooperative rock in a gravity demonstration.

But the one who'd been beating Alcide turned on her then, and she held the stool in front of her, facing down a lion in a circus.

"What'cha gonna do with that, little girl? You can't sneak up on _me_, bitch. I'm gonna tear you apart."

Arin didn't really like pain. She wasn't scared, so much as she felt apprehension flow through her, and a sense of impending necessity. It was only her and him, because behind him, Alcide was wrestling on the ground with the other guy, snarling and growling like a dog.

Her new 'friend' advanced on her, grinning. Arin noticed the gap in his teeth and felt amusement flicker through her. It was almost too movie-esque to bear, she thought randomly, knowing the thought to be out of place in the danger she faced.

He rushed at her and grabbed the stool, tossing it aside easily. As a woman, she was no match for him, even in good physical condition. But she knew that, so she used a simple trick to misdirect his attention. She did the expected thing and went for his groin with her knee. When he reached down to stop her with his hands, clearly thinking to grab her leg and yank her other foot out from under her, she brought the butt of her palm up against the end of his nose with all of her strength.

There was a sickening 'crunch' and he stared at her in surprise, his grip on her leg going instantly slack. He slumped to the ground, still staring, leaving Alcide staring at her from where her attacker had been standing a moment ago.

Horror welled up in her, and she stared at the man on the floor. "I think I killed him," she said, dazed and shocked.

"He was ready to kill you," Alcide reminded her.

It did no good. Misery, horror, shame, sorrow... all warred within her. She stared at the man blankly, acutely aware that he'd had a family somewhere. Family that would mourn him and miss him. She took a step back, shocked by the finality of what she'd done.

"Hey, hey, you had no choice," Alcide told her.

She looked up at him and swallowed hard, nodding. "I know." She did know. It didn't make it better or easier.

A tear fell and she fought it with all her strength. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't. Belying her desire, another tear slid down her face and Alcide pulled her into a hug. "There was nothing else you could do," he reminded her, running his hand down her hair and then down her back. It was the most impersonal embrace she'd felt from anyone in a long time, which made it strangely comforting.

She buried her face in his shoulder and stopped fighting the misery that welled up in her.

No sooner did she let herself cry finally than Alcide was yanked away from her and thrown against the wall.

Eric, fangs out, faced him down. "What did you do to her?" he demanded, his voice ragged with fury.

"Nothing!" Alcide growled. "She's upset because she just killed a man who attacked us. I was just trying to comfort her."

"That's not your place!" Eric snapped.

"Whatever, man," Alcide replied. He pushed away from the wall and walked over to the first man Arin had hit, who was groaning and stirring. He pulled handcuffs out of his pocket and snapped them over the man's wrists.

Arin turned away from them all and leaned across the bar to be sick, having made the mistake of catching sight of the man she'd killed by breaking his nose and driving it into his brain. Denial and horror flooded her again, and this time when she turned, she found herself pulled against Eric's chest, clinging to him in her weakness and regret.

She registered the coolness of his body, mostly because Alcide had made her sweat, but Eric seemed to drain the heat and discomfort from her body, absorbing and dissipating it.

"How touching," Pam drawled when she came into the room and saw Arin clinging to Eric and he with his arms around her.

"Shut up, Pam. We had visitors," Eric told her.

She walked the rest of the way around the bar, holding one hand up in the air as if to protect the polish on her nails. "Great, someone is going to have to clean up all of that blood before we open. I suppose it will be me again."

"The other one got away," Alcide told Eric.

Arin fought to get her emotions under control, but the image of the face of the man she'd killed was burned into her mind.

"Oh, really," Pam snapped at her, "stop sniveling. He would have killed you. Probably raped you. Before or after he killed you."

"I would rather have died than kill someone," Arin whispered.

"Humans," Pam said in a completely disgusted tone of voice. "Completely illogical. Particularly crying women."

"Leave off, Pam," Eric warned her, his arms tightening slightly around Arin as humiliation, grief, and denial flooded her with the implacable fury of a tsunami.


	7. Rejection

**7. Rejection**

Eric picked her up without ceremony or warning and took her into his office. Pam would take care of the mess, and in a few hours, he would find the second attacker in the basement and torture the truth from him. For now, he felt a strong need to calm the woman in his arms. Or maybe distract her.

He sat down sideways on the sofa, stretching his legs along the seat of it and leaning her against the back of it. Her head dropped on his shoulder and she cried. Her tears were quiet, restrained, and he realized something in that moment that he hadn't noticed before.

To everyone but him, she seemed a quiet, almost mousy person. Without the added knowledge of her emotional state, she would have seem restrained and distant and unemotional. Exactly the opposite of the exuberant, mercurial, unpredictable personality that she really was.

The thought was lost, though, as she shifted on his lap with a sigh, her sobs diminishing. Her buttocks rubbed across his cock and he lost all focus on his thoughts. Uncontrolled, blood rushed between his legs to give her a proper beginning-of-the-night salute.

She clearly felt it, and, in one of her lightning-fast switches of mood, amusement flickered and then was followed by a hard tide of lust. Once more, though, nothing of her emotions showed. She didn't move, she didn't react. To all intents and purposes, nothing had changed, except... her breathing became very, very controlled. A human would never have noticed, but he did.

Even in his human life, so very long ago that only the most poignant parts of it remained in his memory, he'd not been one to waste opportunity. This one was too strong to ignore, because her arousal was coupled with his own and he had no reason at all to doubt it.

He controlled his fangs with a force of will and kissed her, hard and deep. But at the touch of his lips, the unimaginable happened and her lust intensified so suddenly and so strongly that it covered his mind in a haze and his fangs entirely ignored him, leaping out. He nearly ejaculated in his pants like an adolescent virgin, so strong was the surge of lust that bore over him, electrified and intensified by his own desire.

She twisted away from him, "No!"

He gaped at her. "No?" he demanded.

She twisted again and he almost lost it in his jeans yet again, a humiliating state for a vampire of his age.

"How can you feel like that, and still say 'no'?" He couldn't believe his ears.

She pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself, still and calm in the middle of raging emotions. Her breathing was ragged, loud, and harsh. Her heart thundered—vampires two counties away could probably hear that. Yet still... she said it again. "No! I don't want this."

"Yes, you do."

"I am not ruled by my emotions, Eric. My desires do not run my life. If I jumped on every man that made me a little wet between the legs, I'd barely have time to eat or have a life."

He scowled at her, fury uniting with the lust that throbbed and burned between them. "That's an exaggeration." It had fucking better be.

She gave him a dirty look. "Eric, you don't even like me."

"So? I'm not asking you to marry me. It's just sex. Pleasure. Don't tell me you're one of those repressed religious types."

"I guess you could say I am. I think that sex is an expression of love between two people. It's easy enough to say that neither one of us loves the other."

He turned away. "Fuck. Do you have any idea how many women would die to be in your position right now?" He realized he sounded absurd and childish the instant it was said. Not that it wasn't true, just that saying it sullied it somehow.

He had amused her. He gritted his teeth. How he hated that rolling sense of withheld laughter that came from her on a nearly continuous basis! Always at the worst of times. But this amusement held pity as well, and he found that he resented it.

"I'm sure an endless line of them-"

He cut her off, standing mere inches in front of her. So close that the heat of her living body tingled the hairs on his own. "Don't you pity me. I am a thousand year old vampire. I am the most powerful and dangerous thing you've ever come into contact with in your life. Don't you dare pity me."

"No, Eric, you aren't."

The words were simple enough. But the feeling behind them made him step backwards. She radiated a sense of cold dread. She had spoken of dying, she had been reminded of being tortured. She had faced down three attackers with Alcide and been near to being raped. She had faced him down in his own fury. The only thing he had felt had been a visceral fear reaction that had quickly given way to a sense of resignation, even inevitability.

But with those four words came that same sense of inevitability... and a dread that nearly turned him inside-out.

He had thought her fearless. He had seen in her an indomitable spirit that could not be conquered. He had felt her quiet sense of confidence and her unflagging acceptance of death, torture, rape, humiliation... everything that the world had thrown at her in the day he'd known her had been among the worst it had to offer. The whole time, nothing had phased her beyond an initial, normal startle reaction.

But she had seen... something. What could frighten a woman such as this?

"There are older vampires than you, Eric."

"I know there are. But none of them have been in the states since well before you were born."

The dread had faded, subsumed already by whatever mechanism she used to control emotions so much more volatile and unpredictable than anything he'd ever experienced from anyone before. He wished momentarily that he had not given her so much blood, but knew that even if he had not, he would have experienced more emotion from her than he knew what to do with.

The image she portrayed was that of cool, unflappable, unruffled calm. She looked indifferent to the point of arrogance, in fact. He realized that this was why humans didn't like her. She laughed a lot, but always on the inside. Even her weeping was quiet, belying the maelstrom of misery that even now boiled to the surface as the memory ghosted past her eyes, whispering there before being shielded from prying vision.

"You are entirely confusing," he informed her. "Stay here."

"Wait!" she cried.

He was halfway across the bar already. He went back. "What?"

"You said you'd take me to my house tonight."

"I have to go get the car. I will pick you up out back."

A flicker of apprehension stole through her. He grinned. At least she wasn't entirely stupid. "Wait here, I will come fetch you when I have arrived."

She nodded and he flashed home to get the car.

He started driving it back, when he felt her emotions calm and then felt the quiet that heralded her sleeping. He stepped on the gas. The last thing he wanted was for her to start dreaming while he was driving. The woman thought about sex more often than a teenage boy. Or at least that was what it felt like to him.

During the drive, he couldn't stop thinking about what could possibly frighten such an indefatiguable, indomitable woman. Knowing that, despite his threats and even Pam assaulting her, not once had he felt anything more than discomfort from her only served to increase the apprehension that came with the unanswered question.


	8. Games of Power

**8. Games of Power**

_a/n This chapter contains explicit descriptions of non consensual sexual situations._

Eric was surprised to find that this time, the emotions rose slowly. It began with a sense of tranquility. Oddly enough, this was something that he almost never felt from his humans. Humans constantly seemed to be in a state of turmoil, and the sense of lassitude and general well-being that flowed through him from her was a surprise.

By the time the sexual desire began to enter into it, he was standing over her as she slept on his sofa. It was a typical Louisiana night, sultry and heavy. No one had turned the air conditioner on, so she was sprawled across the sofa, pink cotton panties peeking out from under his shirt. One of her legs was leaning against the back of his sofa and her arm was thrown over her face to cut the glare from the sign outside the window.

He shut the shade, just in time for her sexual tension to begin. This time, it began slowly, building at first with a steady slowness, then abruptly lashing him with full intensity. He sat down at the desk, watching her broodingly from across the room.

She whimpered in her sleep, but didn't toss and turn. Her limbs gave tiny jerking motions and her lips twitched. The longing increased, intensifying with each passing moment. Then it began to give way to that feeling of being thwarted, and Eric realized that her dreams could not bring her to completion.

The scent of honey and sunflowers was making him crazy with need. He got up and carefully rearranged his cock so that it wouldn't show. Leaving the office, he walked up and sat down in his chair in the bar. Watching her lying there was akin to torture.

It was only a matter of a few moments before the first woman approached him. She was beautiful in the modern sense. Her hair was perfect, although dyed. Her makeup was perfection. Her face shaped exactly so. Her hips were pleasantly rounded and her breasts were full and ripe.

Compared to the honeyed scent in his office, she almost smelled dead.

Once, he would have taken her anyway. She was desired by nearly every man in the bar. Her appearance of physical near perfection would have helped him to remind every man—human or vamp—in the bar, that he was the master here. As well as some of the women.

But he dismissed her. She did nothing for him. She had neither the ephemeral, delicate beauty of Sookie, nor the earthy, fertile beauty of the woman he craved with all of his senses at the moment.

The plastic, fake blond stalked away, to be comforted by another vampire. She shot Eric hot glances filled with loathing and resentment. He didn't care. After some time, he realized that he could not find what he wanted out there. There would be no satisfaction inside of a dancer or a random sycophant for him that night.

He got up and returned to his office, where Arin lay in exactly the same position. He waited patiently, and soon was rewarded as another dream began. Her eyes flickered back and forth under her lids, but he already knew she was dreaming. He thought perhaps this dream took up where the first had left off, because within a moment, a dark pink stain told him that she had soaked her panties in the unbridled lust of another dream.

He waited. It took every ounce of his considerable patience, but he waited for her to get that feeling of incompletion, of dissatisfaction. When it began, he knelt beside the sofa and slid her panties aside. The scent of her intensified. The drumming thunder of her heartbeat in the artery of her leg rolled over him. He slid his finger along the silken, slippery pink skin. She gasped and her body arched slightly. The lust that hit him was as strong as when he had kissed her earlier.

He grinned, a sense of triumph awakening in him. Her body responded to him, if her mind would not.

She whimpered again as he found the hood covering her clitoris and moved it back, pressing the nub beneath. Her fingers flexed, slightly, still paralyzed by sleep hormones. He pictured them gripping the sofa as she cried out under his touch.

The sweet smell filled the room, slightly musky but mostly delicate and sensual. For him, the smell was strong and the various pheromones it emitted were a symphony of delights. His fangs ached from the desire to feed.

He changed his finger to his thumb and continued to tease her clitoris, sliding the finger inside of her. He pressed until, to his surprise, he met a barrier to his quest. He rocked backward, startled by what it revealed. He had ceased his movements and the sense of being thwarted struck him together with a layer of disappointment.

When he moved his thumb again, she practically purred, her fingers flickering and even her toes twitching, as if curling at his touch. He grinned. He cupped her mound, unconcerned with the slight prick of stubble that teased the edges of his palm after a day without the ability to groom herself.

Her breathing was ragged and her body twitched. He wondered what she dreamt was happening, but continued to rub and tease at her, sliding one finger in and out, not pressing hard enough to break the barrier there. It would be his soon enough.

He felt her growing lust and growled as his own considerable will was tested. But at last, his patience was rewarded. A wave of pleasure came from her. It filled him, curling through parts of him long left untouched. Another wave slipped over him, and he felt liquid run down his finger.

A triumphant smile came over him, and he felt roaring satisfaction that was distinctly, powerfully his own. The pleasure he had brought her was palpable, unmistakable. The clear liquid that ran down his hand would have smelled like nothing at all to a human, but for him, it was alive with sweet satisfaction. Absolute proof of his control over her body.

He stood as she subsided back into sleep, still in the exact same position. He smelled the liquid on his hand, then picked up a tissue. He cleaned it off with the tissue, not trusting himself to restrain himself if he were to choose other, more personal ways of cleaning it. The tissue would leave enough trace for others to smell it and recognize his work, anyway.

Then, purposefully, he walked out into the bar. The sweet scent followed him out of the office like a cloud. Instantly, it was disbursed around the room, and every vampire in the room lost control, even the women. Fangs clicked out without exception, and every head turned to him. The room fell into relative silence, only the music to punctuate his entrance. Sitting down, he ignored them all.

He was satisfied. He had reasserted his power over them, subtly and without taking on undesirable sycophants. If parts of his body clamored for attention they would not get, it was a small price to pay. Arin slept peacefully in his office, her body sated, despite her rejection of him earlier.

Even the dull, senseless humans in the bar seemed to understand that something had happened; they were unusually nervous and twittery. Eric smiled.

"Was that really necessary?" Pam asked him in Swedish, knowing none of the other vampires there could understand it, even if they overheard it.

He looked at her lazily, his pleasure slightly spoiled by her nagging. "Well, I could hardly come out with my fangs out all by myself, now could I?"

She gave him a dirty look. "You didn't have to come out at all."

"I think it's good that they be reminded that I have power over them, from time to time," he told her.

"That wasn't exactly your power, that was hers," Pam sallied.

"Irrelevant," he dismissed her clarification with the flick of his hand. "I control her, so it's the same thing."

"But do you really? Do you control a human who can't even be glamored and is known to be anti-vampire?"

His grin was predatory and feral. "She's got a weak spot."

"I think you're wrong. That's your weak spot, not hers."

Eric did not like the astuteness of her observation. But he refused to reward her for it by chastising her and thus giving away the fact that she had struck a nerve.


	9. Welcoming Committee

**9. Welcoming Committee**

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><p><em><strong>an:**__ I wanted to give a big 'thank you' to those who are alerting or favoriting the story. And a big note of appreciation to Nikki and Titau for taking a moment to review as well. Also to Wheresmyothershoe, who commented while I was writing this chapter: Thank you, and the fic is new, perhaps more will comment as time goes by. :)_

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><p>Eric was shaking her awake. Arin didn't even remember falling asleep. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "I'm sorry."<p>

"Did you intend to sleep the night away?"

"Well, that's what normal people do, Eric."

"Yes, I know what normal people do. I believe I was asking what _you_ intended to do, though."

At Arin's glare, he shrugged. "Do you deny that you are somewhat off the norm?"

"It's rude to say so," she informed him. "Are vampires allergic to good manners?"

To her surprise, Eric grinned. "Just me, and only around you. And most other people." He reached out a hand to help her get up.

"Now, look," she said as her hand was engulfed by his cool, strong one. "Was that so hard?"

"Harder than you know," he answered as she stood up. She dismissed the feeling that he wasn't speaking of actually having a moment of good manners.

"You know, I feel pretty good for getting almost no sleep these last couple nights. I usually get pretty cranky if I don't get enough sleep."

"So this is your 'not cranky' version? I dread to think what you are like without my blood to keep you from becoming 'cranky' after losing sleep."

"Nobody likes you, either, do they?" Arin was beginning to feel a little harassed.

"I think you like me," he told her.

"Yes," she said dryly, "I have a real penchant for vipers, werewolves, and angry vampires."

The look he gave her was lethal, "What werewolves?"

She chuckled. "Seriously? It was a joke, Eric. I was just listing off things I'd rather avoid like the plague they are. Including angry vampires who look at me like I just said I wanted to rape his baby or something. Jeez."

They walked out to the car and he opened the door. She slid into the seat and he shut it behind her. She shook her head. He was a constant, endless contradiction.

"When we arrive at your house, you will pack a bag and we will go to Merlotte's to get you some dinner. I will decide what to do with you from there." He turned to look behind them as he backed out of the alley, coming far too close to her for her comfort. She had almost thought he was going to kiss her again, and her body reacted accordingly.

His fangs popped out with a 'click' and he slammed on the brakes. "Fuck! Stop it!"

"I'm just sitting here!" she yelped, spreading her hands helplessly.

"Just calm down," he barked at her.

"I _am_ calm!" She looked out the window. "You're the one freaking out every five minutes!"

"You're an emotional wreck. I cannot concentrate on driving when you're spewing emotional baggage every few minutes."

"Oh no. You can't blame this on me!"

His fangs popped back. "You're irritated with me now."

"Of course I am! You're a bloody tyrant, is what you are." She crossed her arms and glared out the front window.

He turned again and once more, he was too close for her to keep her sanity. He closed his eyes and put the car in park, leaning back against the seat.

"We're going to be here all night. Can you drive like that?"

"Like what?"

"Horny as fuck." He looked at her with a calculating stare.

"I'm not horny!" she objected.

"If you can lie, you can drive," he told her. "You've got the dirtiest mind of any woman I've ever met besides Pam."

Soon, she was sitting in the driver's seat of the sleek, obviously new Competizione.

"Can you please calm down?"

She fired up the engine and backed out with only a glare in his direction. She ignored the insistent ache of her body as it screamed at her that the man beside her was, in a word, delicious. She'd become used to the way her emotions were a long time ago, and thought little of being able to function as if they didn't exist.

It was her daily life.

"Must you go so slow?" he asked after a while.

She gritted her teeth. "I'm going five over the speed limit."

"If we get stopped, I can just glamor the cop," Eric told her. "Go faster."

The last statement brought images to her mind that she really didn't need while driving.

"If you can not control yourself-"

"I'm in perfect control of myself, Eric. I'm driving. You're the one that can't control yourself well enough to drive. Or keep your teeth in your head." She turned off of the main road, the lights of the Competizione bouncing on the rough road that led to her house. "If you'd just shut up and sit there, we'd both get through this that much faster."

"We'd get through this much faster if you'd drive faster."

"No."

"No?"

"If you want me to drive, I'll drive my way-"

She plowed on the brakes with both feet, the sportscar shimmying as it shuddered to a stop, a bullet whizzing past it. Eric was out of the car before it had even stopped—no mean feat given that she'd barely been going thirty-five miles per hour [56 kph].

The five men who'd stepped from the trees with guns in hand were disarmed and dead before Arin could even react to the fact that Eric was out of the car. He drank from the last one, then looked at her as the corpse slowly dropped to the ground, blood dripping from his lips and fangs. Blood was splattered all over his clothes and face, gleaming sickly in the light from the Competizione's headlights.

Arin sat panting, startled by the entire incident. She'd just nearly been shot, and now the long driveway to her home was littered with blood and bodies. Eric stood for a long moment, staring at her with a decidedly predatory look.

He was there one moment, and gone the next. A sound on the glass at her side startled her, and she saw him bending over beside the car. She rolled the window down.

"I will meet you at the house. What is your alarm code?"

She hesitated, not sure she wanted him to have it.

"Now, Arin. If anyone else is waiting, I want to find them before they can take another shot at you."

She sighed and told him.

"I'll meet you there." His voice vanished as he did.

"I didn't know vampires could really fly," Arin muttered to the now-deserted passenger seat.

When it said nothing in reply, she put the car back into gear and tried not to look as she eased around the corpses and continued up the drive to her house.

She found the front door open, and Eric standing inside. He was on his cell phone. He snapped it shut and stood looking at her for a moment. "Where are your towels?"

She showed him the bathroom and the towels. Then she left the room as the shower started up and went down the hall to her own room, where she stepped into the master bathroom and shut the door, locking it behind her. She wasn't sure if it was him, or herself that she didn't trust.

She finished in the shower quickly, walking out into the living room and through to the kitchen. The front door opened and a pink blur passed her. Pam stopped at the bathroom door and Arin stared at her in surprise. Pam knocked once, a short, curt knock, and walked into the bathroom carrying what Arin assumed was a change of clothes.

Arin was surprised to feel a stab of sheer feminine jealousy. She shook it off, recognizing the absurdity of it.

Pam walked out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

"While I understand not liking you, the sheer determination these people are showing is quickly reaching the level of irritating." The pink-clad woman sauntered over to Arin, looking over her jeans and silk short-sleeved shirt with a disdainful air. "I don't like it when Eric nearly gets shot, Arin. I don't know what you're mixed up in here, but it's pissing me off."

"It's all on my blogs, Pam."

"I've read your blogs, Arin." Pam told her. "They're full of bullshit. I want to know what's really going on."

Eric appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, toweling off his chest as he stood wearing only pants. He smirked at Arin and she looked away. So now he was going to be smug about her moment of jealousy, when she couldn't help what she felt—not initially, anyway.

"But this came today, and it shows the lie in your story of your childhood encounter with a vampire." Pam tossed a manilla folder on the coffee table and sat down on Arin's sofa. "The corpses of your parents and your brother were not exsanguinated. Whatever attacked them was not a vampire."

"Yes, he was," Arin told her. "He was too old to drink blood, but he was a vampire. Believe me."

"That's just the problem, Arin. I don't." Pam answered.

Eric picked up the folder and rifled through it, also.

"Do you not understand the definition of a vampire?" Eric tossed the dossier back on the table. "We drink blood."

"You've never known any older vampires who either rarely drank blood, or you never saw them drink blood?" Arin asked him.


	10. The Tao of Godric

**10. The Tao of Godric**

_**a/n:**__ Contains spoilers for season 2 and 3._

Eric turned away from her. There was no way she could know about that last day when he'd seen Godric.

"Perhaps I have," he told her, trying to ignore the dread that radiated from her.

"What?" Pam demanded. "You can't possibly be buying this nonsense?"

"Go clean up, Pam." He said it without looking at her.

She huffed, but zipped out the door, leaving it flapping behind her from the breeze of her passing. By the time they left, he knew she would have the mess in Arin's driveway completely cleaned as if it had never happened.

"Tell me, Arin. Explain to me about vampires that don't drink blood."

The sense of dread coming from her intensified exponentially, and he had to stop himself from looking around for the source of it. Arin turned from him and leaned over her kitchen sink, breathing deeply as if to try to subjugated the emotion.

"So far as I can tell with my study, vampires take one of two paths, as they get older and older."

"What paths?" Eric frowned. He knew nothing about paths. Godric himself said that vampires did not evolve.

"Some of them begin to feed less and less over time. They become weary of violence and death. If they do not kill themselves, they expire and become creatures of pure energy that eat from the energy of the sun like most creatures do."

"New Age nonsense-"

"No. New Age denied the existence of vampires. Now, they want to convert them, yes, but they believe that they can 'transcend' vampirism and return to being human. That's not possible, and is nothing like what I'm talking about here, which is in no existing tradition that I've been able to locate."

"Then how do you know it?"

"First hand accounts. They all point to vampires that disintegrated in the sun, or spontaneously. Each recording of this, although extremely rare, has included elements of the person being seen only at night. Various reasons are given for it, but I believe these to have been vampires."

Eric couldn't shake the memory of Godric appearing to him when he'd been dying with Russell Edgington, and then later when he'd been disposing of him. "Forgiveness is love. Love is all," he had said.

"And what of the other path?"

To his surprise, her emotions seemed to suddenly come under complete control. He sensed them, boiling somewhere within her, but they were distant and trapped in iron self-control. He wondered how a woman of only twenty-five years had managed to gain such iron will.

"They become something much worse than a typical vampire. They no longer consume blood because they are soul-eaters. If they eat a vampire soul, they can walk in the sun. The older the vampire they consume, the longer they can do so."

Eric laughed with disbelief. "Souls? Souls are a fairy tale."

"So are vampires," Arin said tersely.

"Well, assuming that humans really do have souls, I can assure you that vampires do not," Eric informed her. "That much is common knowledge. Besides, what's to prevent them from just endlessly creating a line of vampires and eating them?"

"It seems that they can no longer create vampires themselves. They need vampires to create new ones for them. That's what human farms will be for, and why they have been working so hard to gain complete and total control over the entire planet. Once they control vampires, there is no limit to the number of vampires they can create and consume."

Her emotions were barking and baying behind her wall of self control like starving dogs catching sight of a cat.

"Assuming for a second that you are not completely batshit insane—which I think you probably are, given your completely unpredictable and excessive emotional outbursts—why don't they attack vampires? Surely I'd have heard of all these frequent attacks and consuming of vampires for the purpose of day walking."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't vampires traditionally lived in Nests? Groups of them together may be even too much for these Ancients. But it's also possible that killings that appear to be done by humans really aren't. How often have you heard of killings attributed to humans that seemed inconsistent with the abilities of humans? Like my family, for example."

Eric turned away and paced. It simply wasn't possible. Even more, it wasn't possible that some human would figure it out when vampires themselves had no knowledge of it.

But then there was Godric.

And there was another thought that nagged at him... if there were only two paths, which one of them was he on? He shook his head to clear it.

"It is an interesting theory, but it does not hold water."

"It doesn't hold water, or you don't like it?"

He flashed over to her and turned her around. "Pam is right. You are impertinent." He stepped even closer to her, enjoying the feel of her warmth near his chest. "Do you have the least idea how powerful such an ancient vampire would be?"

Her hand rested for a moment on his chest as she pushed him backward. It burned like sensual fire.

"We still outnumber them, Eric. That's why population control is such a high priority. Fewer people are easier to control."

Her hand fell away and he almost grabbed it to put it back.

He would have to consider it all later. First, he recognized, she needed food. He had looked over her house, and realized that, aside from the grounds themselves, the house was well protected. There were alarms and video cameras around the perimeter. He knew because he had erased the tape of him killing the five men in the driveway.

"Get ready to go. I'll take you to Merlotte's so you can get something eat."

"I have food here," she argued.

"Okay." He shrugged. "You can stay here, but do not go anywhere tomorrow."

"Not even the store?"

"No."

She sighed. "I guess I'd better go to Merlotte's then. I don't have enough food for more than a few meals right now."

"Let's go, then," he answered, gesturing for her to precede him out the front door and grabbed his clean shirt, buttoning it on the way out.

He got in the passenger seat again, and heard her sigh. "Are you going to gripe that I'm going too slow the whole way there?"

"Probably. It does not seem as if you are willing to drive at any reasonable speed."

He smirked when she rolled her eyes at him. "Always my fault, huh?"

"Always."

He enjoyed the feeling of amusement that was radiating from her in soothing, attractive waves. It had irritated him endlessly at first, but the more he was around her, the more he liked how easy it was to amuse her. It was almost seductive, that frequent surge of amusement.

He leaned back and felt the amusement subside to a slow, low murmur in the background and pondered her words. Had Godric evolved, after all? Were there really two paths for vampires? How long did it take before the transition began?

He hated having more questions than answers. He half knew and half feared that if he asked her, Arin would probably have more answers than he was comfortable with anyone having. He didn't ask mostly because he knew that she knew too much, even if she was wrong about part of it. At some point, he would have to make excuses to the AVL or the Authority for letting her live. Excuses he didn't have.

"So you really think that some vampires take a higher path, huh?"

Amusement, strong and deep, flowed through him as she replied, "The Vampire Tao?"

She laughed then, and Eric realized that, despite the extreme frequency of amusement he felt from her, it was only the second time he'd heard her laugh, and the first one had been short and not entirely sincere. This time, she giggled for several long moments, until he found that he couldn't resist either her giggle or her amusement and he started laughing as well.

When they stopped, he told her, "Vampire Tao... you're crazy."

"Ah, see?" she told him, poking him lightly in the leg. "You're starting to like me."

"Whatever makes you think that?"

"A few minutes ago, I was batshit insane. Now I've graduated to crazy. It's clear that I'm growing on you."

Eric grinned. "Are you flirting with me, Arin Jorgenson?"

His grin faded when her mouth tightened imperceptibly and the amusement in her died instantly. It was replaced by a feeling of distrust and hard-edged wariness. "No." Nothing more.

A heavy silence took over the car and Eric wondered just where he'd gone wrong. He would have to figure it out if she was going to be His. And she was. He could bend one small human to his will. He knew women well enough that he could win them over even without glamoring them. Women came to him.

Every day.

This one would be no different.

With that decided, he sat back and tried to enjoy the excruciatingly slow ride to Merlotte's.


	11. First Impressions

**11. First Impressions**

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><p><em><strong>an:** Just thought that I would mention that I am updating frequently this weekend because my 4 year old is spending it with her grandparents. It will, sadly, slow down during the week and probably next weekend. Let's all enjoy it while it's here, though, yes? :)_

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><p>It was almost one in the morning and Merlotte's was hopping. The jukebox was bumping with bass, and there was a line for the pool table. So when Eric Northman walked in with a pretty dark-haired woman, there were a great number of people to see it happen and gossip about it.<p>

Tara, who had returned a week or so before, admitting that she'd intended to stay away much longer, told Sam, "Well, that looks like trouble."

Sam watched as Jessica greeted them, and noticed that the red-headed vampire seemed to be awkward and surprisingly friendly towards the strange brunette.

He stopped Arlene who was looking flustered but appeared to be on her way over to the table. "I'll take this one, Arlene."

"You will? Oh, thank you, Sam! I really appreciate it. That vampire just scares me so bad!"

"Don't worry about it, Arlene. Just go take care of your other tables."

He walked over to the table. "Eric. I don't want any trouble, now."

Eric grinned at him without humor, "Why Sam, whatever makes you think I would make trouble? I have brought your neighbor in for a bite to eat. She was stranded in Shreveport after being mugged."

"Neighbor?" Sam asked, looking her up and down. She was familiar, but he was certain he didn't know her personally. He'd have remembered, especially since she smelled nice—very nice.

Eric drawled at her, "You have been here a month now, and have not visited the mecca of Bon Tempes?"

Ignoring Eric, which Sam thought a perilous thing to do, she extended her hand to be shaken. "I'm Arin Jorgenson, pleased to meet you. They finished building my house a month ago and I've been so busy moving in that I haven't taken the opportunity to visit your fine establishment here."

"Arin Jorgenson? The Arin Jorgenson? That wrote 'Where the Sun Sleeps'?" at her nod, he continued, "I'm Sam. Sam Merlotte. It's a real pleasure to meet you! I didn't know you were moving to Bon Temps."

"Well, I'm here already. Hopefully not to move again for quite some time." She was pretty enough, but when she smiled at him, she was devastatingly pretty. She wasn't really beautiful so much as she was endearing and brought out a strong protection instinct in him.

"So yeah, hey, what would you like to eat?"

"Oh, I haven't really looked over the menu yet. Do you have anything organic?"

Sam's heart fell. "Well, we do. But we only have some organic, grass fed beef burgers, and I'm out of organic buns."

"I'll take two of the burgers, hold the buns."

"How would you like them?"

She blinked at him. "The buns?"

Confused, Sam asked, "What?"

"I don't want buns."

"Well, no. I got that. How do you want your burgers cooked?"

"Oh." She still looked confused for a moment, then she said, "Oh yes. Um, as rare as possible, please. Maybe just sear each side."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. The health department won't allow me to do that. I'll have him make them rare for you, though-"

He was stopped by Eric's low growl. "Make them the way she wants them, Merlotte."

"No. No, no. It's okay. Rare is fine. Really. Just make them rare, Sam," Arin told him.

Sam looked at Eric and knew that if he brought rare burgers to the table, he wouldn't live out the night.

"You smell nice, by the way," he said to Arin. Her face went blank, but then she smiled, a most polite smile.

Eric's fangs clicked out, and Sam felt like running away in terror. "I'll put that order right in," he told her. "Did you want anything to drink?"

"Bottled water, please," she answered.

Screwing up his courage, he asked Eric, "Do you want a Tru Blood?"

"No," Eric said, fangs still out.

"Right. Okay." Sam had to struggle to walk instead of run. Eric had obviously misinterpreted his compliment as flirtation and didn't want competition.

When he got to the counter, the others were gathered up there.

"What the hell is Eric doing here?" Lafayette demanded of him the second he got there.

Arlene said, "Forget that, I wanna know what they're saying." She hissed at Lafayette, "Lafayette, what are they saying? Can't you read lips or somethin'?"

"Yeah," Lafayette said. "She tellin' him, 'Seriously, Eric? Why were you so rude to him? These people are my... something something... I would rather they not think that you'll eat them for even speaking to me'. Now he's tellin' her, 'It's your own fault because you can't control yerself'."

Lafayette stopped and said, "I hate that fucker. I'm going to spit in her shit, I swear- Oh shit!" His hand flew to his mouth and he laughed, an incredulous, startled laugh, "Bitch just kicked Eric mother-fucking Northman!" He whooped with laughter, albeit quietly. "Oh my god!"

Sam stared. Lafayette was right. Arin had kicked him under the table and Eric hadn't reacted at all. If nothing else, Sam would have expected him to kill her simply for the sake of his dignity.

"Oh my Gawd!" Arlene said. "What are they saying, Lafayette?"

"She tellin' him that he shouldn't be eavesdroppin'-"

Sam jumped back as Lafayette was dragged through the window, the bar falling completely silent.

"She's right, Lafayette," Eric said, his hand around the other man's throat. "You shouldn't be eavesdropping. And if you spit in her 'shit', I will end you." He shoved Lafayette back into the kitchen and was sitting back at the booth an instant later.

"Ohhh, she-it," Lafayette said, his voice shaking.

"I'm sorry," Arlene was saying, hands flapping desperately, "I didn't mean nothin' by it. I was just curious is all!" She looked from one to the other of them, "You know that, right? I didn't mean nothin'!"

Sam looked over at the table and saw that Arin looked positively humiliated and miserable. Eric sat casually across from her as if nothing had happened.

"Come on, guys. Give her some space. It's not her fault she's with him. She was stranded and mugged in Shreveport and he gave her a ride. He told me as much."

"Yeah," Arlene objected, "but vampires lie. You know they lie."

"Yes, Arlene. Everything we say is a lie. If I say the sky is blue, it has to turn green, just because I said it was blue." Jessica's voice came from over Arlene's shoulder. She hadn't noticed Sam trying to cue her in on the younger vampire's presence.

"Oooh!" Arlene cried, rushing back into the back toward the women's room, clearly embarrassed to have been caught saying something nasty.

"Who is she?" Jessica asked Sam. "She smells nice. I had to fight to keep my fangs in."

"Yeah, I don't think you should say that to her, though. It upset Eric when I said it." Then Sam turned back toward the table to bring Arin her water. "She's Arin Jorgenson, she moved into that big house Jason and Hoyt just finished help making."

"Really? That place is fantastic!" Jessica gushed. "Wait, isn't she that anti-vampire blogger?"

"No, she's pro-vampire," Tara interjected. "Prolly hates black folks, too, even if she don't have the balls to say so."

Sam sighed and took her water to her. What a train wreck. He wished he'd met her under better circumstances, or perhaps at a different time. As it was, her stay here was already tainted by having walked in with a vampire, regardless of the reason.

The fact that she'd ordered raw meat to eat wasn't going to help the rumor mill any, either.


	12. Promises, Promises

**12. Promises, Promises**

Eric had told himself that he was going with her to Merlotte's to protect her. But when she had reacted to Sam's compliment with an entirely feminine sense of appreciation, he had reacted poorly, jealousy racing through him with a vengeance.

He had come here to mark her as his to the men of Bon Temps. Believing anything else was lying to himself, and Eric did a lot of things, but he never played the fool to himself. She hadn't agreed to be His, but she as well be now, by virtue of the fact that now that she'd been seen with him, no one here would date her.

He just had to figure out a way to clinch the deal, that was all. But he could tell it was going to take time, because although she had an irritatingly complete lack of fear of him, she seemed to have an equally complete lack of interest in sex... If one discounted the fact that half of the time she was horny as fuck and the other half of the time, she was just horny.

"I can't wait to get home and get a good night's sleep in my own bed," she told him, rolling her head and holding her neck now that people weren't staring directly at them. "Your sofa is a horrible place to sleep."

"It's not made for sleeping on," he told her.

"Really? Because when I went hunting for something to sleep on at my new house, the first thing I looked for was a sofa."

"Ah, you see," he pointed at her and waggled his finger chidingly. "That's why nobody likes you. Sarcasm, the last bastion of the socially retarded."

"The proper quote is 'Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.'," she told him. "Fyodor Dostoevsky."

"Did I invade your soul by telling you that sofas are not meant to be slept on?"

"No. By making me sleep on it," she answered.

"Well, if you had told me you objected, I can certainly think of a great many things I'd have personally preferred that you sleep on. Though I doubt you would have slept much there, either, if at all."

He was prepared for the lust this time, and grinned, not even trying to stop it as his fangs clicked out.

"This is becoming a game to you, isn't it."

"It's a great deal of fun. Your reactions are surprisingly extreme. Having gotten over the initial irritation it served me, I'm beginning to enjoy your predictability. Which is odd, because none of your responses are predictable if a person understands humans—only if a person understands you. And I am uniquely positioned to understand you on a very intimate basis."

Sam came up to the table and Arin glared at Eric as her food was placed in front of her. Eric noted that it was properly cooked the way she'd asked for, and he smelled nothing amiss with it. Provided one chose to disclude the fact that it was dead.

She turned to Sam and gave him that heart-stopping smile that Eric was starting to crave. "Thank you."

She returned to her food and missed the slightly stunned look on Sam's face.

"He likes you," Eric told her when Sam had walked away.

She chuckled, a low, soft sound. "He'll get over it. They all do." She took a bite of her food and chewed thoughtfully.

"Well you said it yourself, you are growing on me."

"Hmm, yes," she chewed and swallowed another bite, "but up from pure hatred isn't much to write home about."

"If I hated you, you would be dead," Eric told her. He meant it, too.

"Unless I was bait." She watched him.

He felt like swearing. It was hardly fair to use his own words against him, was it?

"Mmm hmm." She laid the fork down and looked at him. "Don't feel sorry for me, Eric. I've tried to change and fit into society and be liked. I was miserable and I failed anyway. I'm content with the reality of my situation. I really am. It can be lonely sometimes, but I have work to do. If I can get people to at least think about what's going on, and maybe change things, then.. then I've accomplished something and my life has meaning. If I fail to change anything, at least I tried and I was true to myself."

She picked the fork up and continued eating.

Eric said nothing, just watching her. He was surprised to find that just sitting and feeling what she felt as she ate was a pleasurable experience. Feelings of contentment and pleasure radiated from her, that same deep-seated peaceful serenity that had surrounded her during her dream.

"You really are happy, aren't you?" he asked her.

Looking up at him, she blinked and cocked her head, pondering his question. "Generally speaking, yeah. I mean, I'd like to have a boyfriend. But it's not what life has to offer me. I'd like to have kids some day. Again, not in the cards. I've done okay for myself. I'm not rich, but I have enough money to eat the way I want, live in the home I dreamt of, and keep a few animals. I'd like to save the world, too. But... I'll make do with what I have." She was smiling as she said the last, and he felt her amusement at the idea of saving the world.

"I don't think I've ever known anyone who was content with their life," he told her.

She smiled. "The secret of non-attachment. It's easy to be happy when you have nothing to lose," she told him. "When you care about someone or something else, it gets hard, because you have to watch them hurt." A shadow crossed her face and he felt a flicker of remembered pain, and knew it wasn't his own.

"Can I take that for you?" Sam asked, reaching for Arin's plate, now empty.

"Thank you," she smiled at him. "Please give my compliments to your cook. He spiced them perfectly and seared them exactly the way I like it."

"I'm sure he'll be happy to hear that," Sam told her.

Eric almost laughed. Yes, Lafayette would be happy to hear it, because he had really thought Eric might kill him. Not that he didn't have good reason to believe it, but Eric did make some attempt to cooperate with the AVL. Killing Lafayette in front of the whole of Bon Temps would be frowned upon.

Eric dropped a fifty on the table, knowing it would more than pay for the meal, and putting forth his own sort of effort to apologize for disrupting the evening for Sam's patrons. He held his hand out to help Arin up, noticing her slight hesitation. So she had some idea of what he was doing. Good. He would have been embarrassed for even considering making her His if she'd been too stupid to pick up on it.

Nothing of the irritation she felt showed as she stood up without his assistance and walked to the door. He followed her out and ignored the sudden buzz of conversation inside the bar.

They got in the car and she started it up. Then she sat still for a moment and looked at him.

"You know, Eric. Just because you want to have sex with me doesn't mean you like me. A lot of men end up with eighteen years of child support payments because they mistake wanting to have sex with a woman with actually liking her."

"Well, it's a good thing that I won't have to worry about child support payments, then," he answered her, thinking himself very clever.

His answer was met with impatience and no amusement.

"I really don't want to have to spend the rest of our association with each other fielding nonstop attempts to bed me and to mark me like a dog pissing on a tree, Eric. I'm not interested in sex outside of a committed relationship, and I'm not about to have one of those with someone who doesn't even like me. It's very tedious to have to constantly deal with this kind of thing."

Eric placed his hand over his heart. "I will be the soul of discretion from now on, I promise."

She gave him a narrow, suspicious stare.

"It's true," he told her.

She pulled out of the parking lot and headed to her house. "Will Alcide be at my house today?"

He was glad for the change in conversation. "Yes. There will be others in the woods, as well. Stay inside the house and don't go outside."

"I have animals to care for at the barn. They've been too long without care. The cow will probably get mastitis."

"Fine, you can care for the animals, but nothing else."

She sighed. "You're a tyrant."

"An occasionally benevolent tyrant," he corrected her.

Her face didn't change, but he felt her laughter. It was good enough, especially since it had been so long before her since he'd felt such genuine, uncomplicated amusement. If the only way to get it was by borrowing it, he didn't regret having saved her any longer.

She was right, though she didn't know it. She was growing on him.

They turned up her drive, and sure enough, Pam had long since seen to it that the bodies and even the blood had been cleared away. Nothing remained of the gory scene from earlier that evening. He was glad. He didn't like the feelings of dismay and sorrow that Arin experienced with each subsequent death she witnessed. Though it hadn't been as bad as the first one—the one she had killed herself in the bar.

She pulled up in her drive and turned off the engine. She held his keys out to him, and he shook his head.

"Too slow. I'll come get it tomorrow night."

She turned and got out without saying anything. He got out as well and walked her to the door.

"Eric?"

"Hmm?"

"You've been kind to me," she told him. "Thank you. I'm sorry for killing someone in your bar and getting you shot at."

He shrugged. "Trouble comes, with or without you." He stuffed his hands in his pockets, uncertain, and surprised to feel that way. "You're welcome."

"Sleep well today."

She was the first human who hadn't said "good night" to him when it was time for a day's sleep. An unfamiliar emotion welled up in him. So he said nothing and flew back to the bar to ensure his captive was still chained in the basement and to prepare for a day of no doubt restless sleep.


	13. Wolves Don't Play Fetch

**13. Wolves Don't Play Fetch**

Arin went out to care for her cow and feed the chickens. The cow, having not been milked, kicked her. The chickens were nicer, they just tried to climb her for their feed.

When she was done, she left the barn and went inside. She did some research on the internet to see if she could find any pictures of the vampire that had attacked her, then slept much of the day away to get up in the early evening and care for the animals again. She was pleased that Betty didn't kick her this time.

Straightening up, she headed back to the house, intending to do some more research.

Rounding the corner of the house, she stopped, gasping. In front of her stood a dog—no, she realized—a wolf. He was white and gray with golden brown around his ears and on his neck. His eyes seemed to glow as if from an inner light, and she smiled. He was breathtaking.

"Hi there," she said to him, pitching her voice low and soft. "Hey. I won't hurt you."

He sat down and stared at her.

"You're beautiful," she told him. "I don't think I've seen you around here." She inched toward him, then let him sniff her hand. He sniffed it, then turned away to lick his shoulder, uninterested. She ran her hand down his neck, and then said, "Damn, no collar. That would have made finding your owner easy."

He growled at her.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your friend. Finding your human friend." Then, when he gave her a clearly disgusted look she laughed. "Don't be like that. You didn't get this pretty and healthy all by yourself. Somebody somewhere loves you and takes really good care of you." She ran her hands through the luxurious fur of his neck and rubbed behind his ear on one side.

"You like that, don't you. Yeah, you're definitely well loved," she told him with a smile. "You ought to get on home, beautiful. Go on, go home."

He sat still and looked at her, his tongue lolling out. She chuckled. "Well, I don't mind if you want to stay a little while, but you have to behave yourself." She wagged a finger at him. "I have a strict 'no licking' policy."

He laid down, dropping his head down on his paws, and looked up at her.

"Oh, no. Don't do that. No puppy-dog-eyes, either! Strict rules around here, buddy!"

He didn't move. She rubbed his ear with one hand. Then she went to the front of the house, going up the three steps to her porch. She looked back to find him following her. Sighing, she sank down on the middle step.

"Not going home?"

He sat down at the bottom of the steps and looked up at her. She sighed.

"Well, come up here, then." She patted the step beside her. He whined and she said, "It would comfort me." He padded up to first sit, then lay beside her. She curled her fingers through his fur. "You know, they say wolves can't be tamed. That they're always wild. I think in some ways, it makes you better companions. People forget that dogs can be dangerous animals." He laid his head on her leg and looked up at her.

She smiled wistfully at him. "I was going to get a dog after I moved here. I'm glad now that I hadn't yet. They probably would have shot my dog if I'd had one. You should really go home, too. There's nothing but trouble here. There will be more of them coming, and when they do, they'll think you belong here and probably shoot you, too."

"Eric can't be here all the time. At some point, Vinciente is going to find someone to attack during the day for him." At the name, the wolf raised his head and whined at her, pawing at her. She chuckled, "Listen to me, talking to a dog. You want to know more about Vinciente?" He laid his head back down on her leg. "You just want more ear scratches," she murmured, obliging her imaginary conversation with him.

"Vinciente is a vampire. He's really old. Nearly as old as Eric, I think. It's hard to be sure, the vampires are pretty careful. They've had to be. Anyway, I think he serves the Ancient that attacked and killed my family." The wolf rolled over and she scratched his belly. "Ah yes. It always ends with belly scratches, doesn't it?" she giggled at his lolling tongue as he nudged her when she stopped scratching while talking to him.

"Well, here's something that you may not know. In fact, I doubt many people know it. The story is that Vinciente had a twin, Vincent. They were identical twins. But, Vincent supposedly got killed by another vampire. There's a lot of speculation that it was Eric, but according to the rumors, Eric denies it and that's part of their feud." He whined and bumped her hand when she paused thoughtfully. "Oh, sorry." She went back to scratching his belly.

"So, this is my theory. Vinciente is supposed to be in Europe right now. I don't think he is. I think that's Vincent. I believe that Vinciente and Vincent fabricated the whole story of his death, and that Vinciente is in America right now. I think it was him who attacked me. He looked like the pictures of Vinciente, anyway. I only found two that I think are authentic."

The wolf sneezed, and she laughed. "Yeah. It's hard to know. I could be totally off. And that's the rub, you see?"

Apparently, he did not see at all, since the only thing he seemed to care about was that she not stop petting him.

"Now, before you ask why I haven't told Eric yet, I'll answer that. He already thinks I'm batshit crazy. That's the first reason. The second reason is because if he realizes how much I know, he'll probably kill me in spite of needing bait." The wolf pawed at her leg. She let out a heavy sigh, looking down at him. "You know, I do believe you've lost all of your wolfly dignity, and only for the price of a belly rub."

As if he understood her, he rolled over and stood up, shaking himself and showering dust and fur into the air. He laid down and crossed his front paws, laying his head across them. "That's it?" she asked him. He lifted his head to look at her. "That's the best you've got? Come over here." She patted her lap and he laid his head back down.

She stood up and picked up a stick. "Do you want to play?" She threw it. He watched it fly away, then looked at her. His head dropped back to his paws.

"Oh, come on. I was joking about wolfly dignity. You're a very, very dignified fellow. Don't be offended." She threw another stick and gave up. "Well, at least you listened to me yammering. Which is better than I can say for most of my readers, who don't even seem to understand what I write."

"Anyway, this Vinciente, he is rumored to work with werewolves, though a different pack than Russel Edgington was supposedly running with." His ears had perked up and he was staring at her. "Oh, don't look at me like that. Werewolves aren't real. Well, I don't think they're real." She grabbed him by the scruff at the sides of his neck and kissed him on the nose. He pulled away and she giggled. "You have nothing to fear, my friend. Werewolves don't eat wolves, even if they are real."

She looked out over the yard to the trees at the edge of her property that went into the swamp beyond. She thought she saw gray bodies moving in the trees. Of course, that was nonsense—there were no wolf packs in Louisiana, so she went back to talking to her new friend.

"Vinciente supposedly has this pack of werewolves. Now, if I'm right—and I'm probably not—then Vincent is putting on the show of being Vinciente while he's over here working to kill me. The problem is, why is he even trying to kill me? Nobody believes me. The humans don't believe me. The vampires don't believe me. And you know what?" He cocked his head at her questioning tone. "If there were werewolves, they wouldn't believe me either." She grinned at him. "That's a fact."

She looked back out at the woods. "I'm going to go inside and research some more on Vinciente. Do you think I should tell Eric about my guess?"

He laid his head back down on his paws. "You're useless when it comes to advice, you know. Cats always give you advice." He looked up at her. She grinned at him. "Okay, I lied. They don't. I was just hoping that would make you change your mind. Anyway. I'll be back out later. If you're still here, maybe you'll reconsider playing fetch. It's a proper dog activity, you know."

He looked away from her.

"Alright. I get you. Beneath your dignity." She patted him on the head and started up the steps. Turning back, she looked out again at the woods. She wished it was sundown already.

"Are those friends of yours out there?" she asked the wolf, not expecting any more of an answer than she'd gotten already.

But his head snapped up and his nose quivered. He leaped up and gave a single, loud bark, then his hackles went up and he growled. Wolves broke from the trees, and Arin felt surprise and then a deep concern for 'her' wolf.

She immediately realized that he could probably take care of himself, and she should do the same. Turning, she started up the steps. A wolf jumped over the railing and into her path, snarling. Another leaped the railing on the other side, tripping slightly.

Her wolf leaped on the first one, rolling over and over in a snarl of growls and teeth and flying fur. Arin turned and ran down the steps to the dirt, her way into the house barred by the second snarling gray wolf.

She knelt and grabbed dirt in each hand, intending to throw it in the eyes of the wolf blocking the door. And in the other one's eyes, if she could get the chance. But she didn't. Instead, she found herself surrounded, wolf bodies pressing against her.

It dawned on her that there were two separate packs, one forming a tight circle around her, and one snarling and snapping at the perimeter of the first pack. She did note that the pack pressing against her was much, much smaller than the other.

Why they would protect her, she didn't know, but she felt a sudden, deep regret. They didn't stand a chance.


	14. Dogfight

**14. Dogfight**

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><p><em><strong>an:**__ Thank you for all the favorites and alerts. I hope that means that people are enjoying the story so far. :) Anyway, sorry, this chapter got looong..._

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><p><em><strong>Chapter contains explicit depictions of violence.<strong>_

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><p>Eric woke to a sort of urgency laced with a feeling of deep determination and overlaid by a sense of regret and admiration that made him lay there for a moment just to savor the feeling. It took a moment of inexplicable disorientation for him to realize that the feelings weren't his own.<p>

Recognition exploded in his mind with the full force of a stampeding herd of buffalo. His writer was in serious shit and she didn't have the good sense to be terrified. She didn't come with the standard alarms; no fear, no apathy, no deep-rooted and overwhelming expectation of deliverance.

She completely lacked a reasonable fear response, and she felt everything so deeply that none of her emotions triggered an extraordinary response from him. It was only after analyzing whatever she felt that he could work out—sometimes-when she was in danger. Like now.

He was out of the coffin and flying across the land before he even got completely clear on his determination to do so. He landed in her yard, a ways away from her house. Werewolves were attacking her, and the group of weres that Alcide had brought with him were protecting her. She had a stick and was swinging it with surprising efficiency over the heads of the weres protecting her.

The invading weres had made a mistake attacking just before the sun set. Worse for them, Eric had fed on the useless captive just before rest, so he had the overwhelming benefit of being sated. His fangs clicked and he zipped into the middle of the group of scrapping weres, scooping Arin up so fast she barely reacted before she was inside the house.

"Stay here," he commanded her. She gulped and nodded.

He was out before she had finished the first nod, closing the door softly, yet firmly behind him. He hissed at the second 'were on the porch as she turned on him with a single, sharp bark of warning to her pack mates.

Eric picked her up and threw part of her body, keeping a hind leg and ripping it off. Sweetly scented blood filled the air, sparkling gems in the moonlight that rose and gleamed and then fell to splatter with soft, delicious sounds on the porch. She yelped and changed in mid-air, her cry turning into a strangled scream as she landed in the middle of the pack of fighting weres. They scattered, and Eric roared as Alcide's group broke and rushed for the trees.

The other pack milled, barking in short bursts that sounded like laughter. They couldn't possibly know what they were up against, Eric thought. Because if they had, they'd have run, too. The weres working for him weren't running away from the fight, they were showing him which ones to leave alive.

Beside him, a pair of weres continued to fight, ignoring him. One of them, he knew, was Alcide. He was badly injured, so Eric took care of his opponent first, a big dark gray wolf that had obviously fed recently on V.

Eric jerked him off of Alcide and tore his throat out. Blood geysered and the wolf turned into an older man who struggled and gagged, fighting an impossible fight for his life. The glitter of fresh arterial blood as it pumped from him exhilarated Eric.

Fury burned through him, and some dim part of his mind realized he was fortunate in that, because if he had been overcome by Arin's emotions at that time, he would not have been able to continue. She was wracked by heart-rending compassion and sorrow.

Not Eric, though. These weres had attacked what was his. They had invaded an area he had marked the night before.

They jumped on him as a pack, snarling and growling and hoping to overwhelm him with numbers. His own weres were back, though, and as Eric was set upon by the strange pack, they were set upon from behind. Eric grabbed indiscriminately and snapped a neck like a twig. Throwing the corpse aside, he ignored it as this one, too, immediately changed to human form. He grabbed another by the skull, feeling the satisfactory 'pop' as his thumb sank into an eye socket. A scream rose that could never have come from a human throat and the beast scrabbled at him, gouging his side open with raking claws.

He ripped a paw off in a shower of blood and a scream of breaking, protesting bone when it dug too deep. He squeezed harder. Bone shrieked and then gave way under his hand. He discarded that 'were, too. He picked one up and threw it. It hit a post on the porch and folded in half around it, snapping its spine instantly.

The pack broke and ran. His weres snapped at their heels, the injured Alcide hamstringing one despite his own dire predicament. Eric killed two more and let the rest go. He did not want to be lured into a possible ambush in the trees. He called off his own weres, who stopped only reluctantly at his rough "Let them go."

They returned to the porch, and Eric snapped his cell phone open, ignoring the blood that coated him.

Pam answered and he informed her of the requirement of a cleanup.

"Again, Eric? Why don't you just kill her. It would be a lot less messy."

"Whoever is behind this will have to show himself soon," Eric replied. "He's running out of minions."

"Probably not," Pam answered. "Humans are like cockroaches. Where there's one, there's thousands, and most of them are bottom feeders."

"These were werewolves."

There was silence for a few ticks of the invisible clock. "Sophisticated," Pam complimented the unknown person behind the attacks.

"Messy," Eric corrected her.

"I suppose you killed them all? Should I send a truck?"

"Only a few," Eric told her. "But they are in pieces." He shut the phone and thanked the weres. Most of them laid down, some turning to lick themselves or companions.

He walked inside, Alcide following, limping in behind him.

"Are you okay?" Eric heard alarm in Arin's voice, and found it surprisingly gratifying. However misplaced.

He shrugged. "It was just a few wolves."

"Oh no, you look terrible," she said to Alcide's wolf-form. "You poor boy. Stay right there. Go ahead, you lay down right there. I can clean the rug." She went into the kitchen and grabbed a washcloth from a drawer. Wetting it, she rushed back to kneel beside Alcide and start cleaning him with it.

Eric's fangs popped back out. Alcide would be fine with a bit of his blood. Then he hesitated. Was it possible that she didn't realize? That although she was so versed in vampire history, she didn't believe in, or didn't know about werewolves?

"Eric?" she said.

He snapped his fangs back in with an effort. "Yes?"

"Can you help him? I mean, I know he's just a dog, but he protected me. It's the least we can do to help him, I think."

"This particular 'dog'," and Eric's fangs popped back out as he said it, reminding Alcide of just whom Arin belonged to, "has already had my blood. But you're right, not yet tonight."

Eric opened his wrist and let Alcide lap some of the blood up before withdrawing and healing his own wound. He didn't give him too much—he wanted the man healed, not high.

"There you go, good boy! Good boy! Thank you!"

Eric wondered how Alcide could stand it.

She pulled the wolf across her lap, petting and rubbing on him. "That's a good boy! You sure are!"

Eric scowled. "Stop fawning over the dog," he growled at her. "He's just doing his job."

Alcide tried to jump off of her, but she clung to him, "Oh shush, Eric. He's just a dog—a wolf, rather, in case you can't tell." She turned back to Alcide, "And a very good wolf. Yes, indeed, you are!"

"Get. Out." Eric gestured at the door.

Alcide squirmed loose and darted out. Eric noticed, to his irritation, that the man's tail was wagging slightly. Eric shut the door behind him and turned to look at Arin. She was standing up, brushing herself off.

He walked up to her, grasping her by the shoulders. "Have you no care for yourself?" He shook her slightly, "No concern for your own life or the people who will miss you?" She blinked owlishly at him. When she opened her mouth to speak, he cut her off. "You have no proper fear. No alarm to warn me that you are in danger. How can I protect you if I don't know that you need me?"

She wasn't paying attention. Her hand touched his chest, palm hot against his flesh. "You lied, you're injured, too."

"I did not state that I was not injured," he told her, trying to shut off the welter of his own emotion as the heat of her palm blazed down his ribs to his belly, following the line of a deep wound. "It is healing already. In a few minutes, there will be no sign of it-"

He stopped, surprised at the depth of her emotion, and the newness of what she felt. It was an overwhelming sense of wonder and surprise. There was gratitude coupled with sorrow.

"I'm sorry that you got hurt protecting me," she told him.

Her hand, still touching him, was a radiating pinpoint of heat.

"You would probably like a shower," she said, her hand trailing back up.

The thought of her doing that in the shower, naked and holding a sponge, sprang unbidden into his mind. His cock responded instantly to the image.

"Yes," he said.

She looked up and her eyes met his. For the first time since meeting her, he saw her face unguarded. The awe, the gratitude, the wonder that she was feeling was laid out across her features, and he was struck at the profound beauty that the raw emotion lent to a face already lovely.

For a moment—just a moment—time suspended and the unbridled sexual passion he felt for her was replaced by something else. Something tender and familiar, yet different. He felt her emotions respond, a turbulent sea of passion lifting and defining the other emotions like buoys in a maelstrom.

He touched her face, so warm and alive. Her heart beat roared through him, the very life in her veins calling to him, seducing him, drawing him. "Arin," a voice whispered—and it was his own.

Just like that, the spell that bound them broke, shattering into a thousand tiny fragments that winked and glittered with broken promise as they fluttered invisibly to the ground all around him. Her face closed off, the mask clicking into place with the same intimidating finality of his fangs snapping out. The sea of emotions was stilled and silenced as abruptly as if someone had hit the 'mute' button on a remote control.

"I'll set a towel out for you," she told him, her hand falling away as she walked into the bathroom.

Eric fought the urge to follow her in and shut the door and forget everything inside her body for an hour or ten.

"I'll be right back," he told her, and stepped out the door.

Alcide had his clothes on and was sitting on the steps.

"Is it really appropriate to be crawling in her lap?" Eric asked him.

"She doesn't know. She doesn't believe in werewolves. Although, she did state that the vamp that attacked her has a history of consorting with us."

"What?" Eric leaned against a porch support.

"Well, it seems she looked on the internet yesterday and found the vamp she thinks attacked her. I don't think she'd have discussed any of that with me if she'd have known it was me, and not just a friendly neighborhood dog."

"I'm sure getting to lay in her lap had nothing to do with it," Eric said dryly.

"I behaved," Alcide objected. "And it wasn't easy in wolf form. She smells... wow. Real nice."

"Shut up, Alcide." Eric raked a hand through his hair. "Which vampire?"

"That's the thing. She says he has history with you. His name's Vinciente."

Eric frowned. They did have a history. A long feud, in fact. "Vinciente is in Europe."

"Maybe. But she's got some wild speculation about there being two of them. Or, more exactly, that Vinciente turned his identical twin, Vincent and then claimed that you killed him, thus lending authenticity to the claim so that they could masquerade as one another."

"She comes to startling and strange conclusions," Eric replied. "I find myself wondering how her brain is wired sometimes. Her website states that she was diagnosed as autistic as a child. She does not strike me as such."

"You can kind of tell sometimes," Alcide told him.

"Really? I cannot."

"She's not very expressive, unless you're a dog. Autistics tend to be unemotional, as I understand it. They pretty much feel anger and not much else."

"Feel it, or express it?"

Alcide shrugged. "Who knows."

"She feels a lot that she doesn't express, and she expresses a lot that she doesn't feel."

"Weird," Alcide said and then fell silent.

"Did she mention anything about the vampire she claims attacked her family?"

"You don't believe her?" Alcide asked.

"I have reason not to. I also have reason to consider the possibility."

"She didn't mention it," he answered. "I'll tell you if she does."

Eric changed the subject, "How did they get so close without any of you seeing them? Did you recognize the pack?"

"I don't know. I think she saw them twice. I-"

"You saw that she had noticed something, and you did not investigate it?" Eric's hand was at Alcide's jaw and the werewolf was dangling several inches off of the ground by his neck.

He grabbed Eric's hands. "I wasn't sure!" he gasped out.

Eric eased up so that he could breathe enough to speak. "I can't tell anything about her. Her expression rarely changes. Her scent doesn't even change!" He shivered. "She's spooky, man."

Eric dropped him. "How do you know she saw something, then?"

"I think she might have. It's just a flicker on her face. Surprise or uncertainty. I don't know." Alcide rubbed his hand on his neck.

"I saw nothing, smelled nothing. Neither did the others."

The 'others' were sitting in the now-cleaned dirt of Arin's front yard. Eric looked them over. None looked away, as might a guilty man or woman—or werewolf.

He frowned. How had a human seen the wolves and a pack of werewolves not seen them? It made no sense. He looked at the door to the house. Nothing about Arin made sense.

"Go home," he commanded. "Come back tomorrow morning. Alcide, stay in human form, pick one of the females to play doggie."


	15. Premonition

**15. Premonition**

Arin stepped out of the shower in the master bathroom. She felt sullied by the events of the evening, and guilt and anger were beginning to gnaw at her. She wrapped a towel around herself and then bent over to wrap another around her long hair.

"What's bothering you?"

She shrieked, startled. "Eric! Get out!"

"Why? You're decent. What's bothering you?"

"That beautiful animal and his pack almost got killed tonight, because of me. Alcide—who didn't show up today, by the way, and I'm worried about him—almost got killed yesterday because of me. It's one thing if you're going to mess with me. Okay, I get that. I deserve it, for not keeping my mouth shut. Or my blog shut. Whatever. But I don't like others getting hurt because of me. I don't like seeing your bones sticking out wounds because of me. I don't-"

He was standing right in front of her. He had showered and smelled of soap. "You care about me."

She was surprised. "Of course I do. Why would you think I didn't?"

"You don't like me."

"That doesn't mean I don't care. It doesn't mean I want you to get hurt because of me." She tried to go around him out into her room.

He stepped in front of her, forestalling her again. "Vinciente and I have hated each other for seven hundred years. It isn't because of you. You're only 25."

It did nothing to assuage her anger. "Can you please let me get dressed?"

His eyes raked her, gleaming with predatory hunger and arousal. "If you must," was all he said, leaving the room quietly.

She was left to vacillate between gratitude and disappointment. She'd wanted him to leave. Hadn't she? She laid back on the bed, still in her towel. She hadn't adjusted to nights, and her nap earlier had been brief and inadequate. She decided she would lay down for just a moment, then get up and go face the confusing, contradictory Viking in her living room.

She dreamed that she woke up and dropped the towel on the floor. In her dreams, she was as bold as she wished she could be, and she walked to the living room. He was there, waiting. She slid into his embrace and he kissed her.

Her body fit to his perfectly and they melded together, touching and kissing and exploring each other without inhibition. His body was cool, and the contrast between them ignited her lust. But just as she began to slide down on him to take him inside her, his fangs clicked out, and his face distorted.

Instead of biting her, though, he began to suck her very soul out, as the Ancient had done to her parents and her brother. Sick horror filled her as the blue essence of her very life began to tear free from her body, sending pain screaming through her.

She jerked awake, a horrified, appalled shriek breaking from her lips.

The door banged open and Eric stood in front of her, fangs out and eyes wild.

"What is it?" he demanded hotly.

Her hand flew to her mouth, and she recognized the tenor and tone of the dream as a premonition. "Eric?" she breathed. "What have you done?" Her heart sank. She'd begun to think she'd found the one. That Eric might have been the one to help her fight the Ancients.

He frowned at her, "What do you mean?"

She shook her head. "You are on the wrong path, Eric." She turned away from him and curled up on the bed to cry.


	16. A Time to Kill

**16. A Time to Kill**

For a thousand years, Eric had known the fear of humans. Even other vampires feared him, many had even from the start. He had been feared and loathed for a span of life longer than most other creatures or beings alive on the planet could claim to have existed.

'What have you done?' What hadn't he done? He was a thousand years old. He had tortured, he had raped, he had murdered countless times. He had defied his Maker and he had even defied the natural order of the cycles of life and death.

He was an unnatural abomination and he had accepted it a long time ago. He thrived on the fear of others, and lived uncaring of their loathing. Godric had taught him to subsume all emotion into a state of careful control until it had vanished.

But this woman; this contradictory, confusing, fearless woman had shown him something that he had felt so very rarely that he had nearly not recognized it. She had trusted him without fear. She had looked for Eric, instead of seeing only the vampire.

In a split second, he had lost it all. But the moment of fear when she saw him hadn't been the thing that cut him to the quick the most. What drove the stake into his proverbial heart was the sense of overwhelming disappointment in him.

In some way that he could not pinpoint or define, he had let her down. She had seen something huge in him, something worthy, something that had let her look at him with more awe and gratitude than he had ever seen expressed on a human face before. She'd had faith in him.

He summoned Pam. When she arrived, he told her to watch over Arin. Then he left, traveling swiftly to the Gulf of Mexico, where he stopped to stand beneath the palm trees and look out over the water. The surf was a quiet, muted song. There was only a slight breeze, and the moon glittered across the water.

He understood something else, then, as he hadn't understood it even when it was said to him. He had disappointed Godric as well. "Forgiveness is love. Love is everything." Eric felt a bloody tear slip down his cheek, and he dropped to his knees in the sand.

"Godric," he cried softly. "If Love is everything, I am doomed. I can not love."

He had defied his Maker.

He looked up at the shining path of the moon on the water. "She's right, isn't she? I am on the wrong path. You tried to tell me that."

There was only the surf and the whisper of the breeze in the trees to answer him, and the distant ache of Arin's disappointment in him. It was made the more poignant because there was no judgment with it. No anger, no hatred of him.

Just a disappointment so vast that he wondered how anyone could bear it.

"Godric!" he cried to the distant moon, as if it could cough up his Maker and show him the way.

As he knelt in the sand, a thought rose in him. He knew how he could end the emotions that pulled him to and fro. He knew how he could end the torment of facing her disappointment and her sorrow. He could end the regret, destroy the compassion. He could be free of her and the danger she presented to him.

He rose to his feet and his fangs ejected forcefully. All he had to do was kill her. Then there would be peace again, and proper fear. No more emotional turmoil. No unslaked lust. No more confusion. All would be as it should be.

He was back in her house and stalking down her hallway before he had completed the final thought. He turned and dismissed Pam with a short, curt wave of his hand.

A moment later, he stood over Arin as she slept, her breath whispering and her heartbeat thundering with sweet smelling blood that tasted as fresh as the days of his vampire youth.

He knelt beside her on the bed, his fangs snapping out. Her eyes opened, and met his. Those eyes, two pools of blue, deep and mysterious. They were shadowed in the darkness, shrouded and as shimmering as the beach he'd just left.

Her hand laid on his cheek, and a tremor passed through his body at her heat. Her emotions were calm, even soothing. The disappoint was there, but it was muted, distant.

"Have you come to kill me at last?" she asked.

He laid down beside her, looking into her face. His fangs retracted. "Yes. You aren't afraid?"

"No. Better this way, than the other."

"He'll come for me directly soon. Vinciente, I mean. I have to be strong. I have to be solid and able to think clearly. Your feelings are too strong. They make me weak. Vulnerable."

"I know."

"I can't afford weakness."

"I know."

"I can't be distracted when I most need to focus."

She just smiled. It was a sad, sweet smile. Behind it was sorrow and compassion.

He pulled her close to him and smelled coconut scented hair conditioner. "This would be easier if you were angry. Or scared."

Her emotions calmed again like smooth, untouched water. "I cannot choose what to feel, Eric." She laid her hand on his chest.

"It's not right for me to feel like this. It defies the natural order." He said it quietly, more to himself than to her.

As if she knew that, she didn't speak.

Trying to break the tension, or to shift his thinking, he joked, "We could have sex first."

No amusement. No lust. In its place, disappointment and pity.

He felt ashamed.

It had all seemed so clear, so easy a few minutes ago. Kill her and end all of the uncertainty that came with her. Drink her and then find and finish off Vinciente while he was strengthened by her pure, sweet blood. So simple.

He brushed a strand of hair off of her face. It was still damp. It was like her, pliant and yet strong at the same time.

He rolled over and pulled her to him, her head on his chest. She threw a leg over him. The heat and the weight of it hardened his cock and softened his heart. He listened to the sounds of her. The rhythm of her breathing, the steady drum of her heartbeat, the whistle of blood in her veins.

He felt a drop of blood slide down the side of his face from his eye. 'You are on the wrong path, Eric.'

He was a vampire. There was only one path. There was no evolution, no shining light in the end, unless he chose to meet the sun as had his Maker. Lying in this bed with this woman was weakness and vulnerability and indulging in it was sheer madness.

Her hair was soft and cool. Her body was firm yet yielding, and hot. Her mind was quicksilver and her emotions mercurial. She was confusing and confrontational and everyone else thought she was an empty shell devoid of human emotion beyond anger.

Eric felt like he was floating. In all the world, he knew with absolute certainty that he was the only one who knew her. The only one who saw beyond the facade of indifference and into the heart of a woman who felt alone and hated and yet still carried a nonsensical dream of saving the world that shunned her.

It was all so simple. No more turmoil, no more tears. Just kill her.

She looked up at him, and he met her too-knowing eyes. They looked through him and into the soul that he knew he didn't have. He knew she saw emptiness and he felt naked.

Because he didn't know who else to ask, he said, "What should I do?"

Sadness. Dignity. Compassion. "Choose, Eric."

"And then what?"

"And then you have to choose again every day. We all do."

Regret weighed on him. She was wrong. There was only one path for a vampire.

But he didn't have to take it tonight. He held her and let the song of life flow around him from her. Soon, she was asleep and he laid there, holding her and imagining what it would be like if life were simpler and he weren't on the only path available to him.

He didn't expect to fall asleep, and never registered the end of the night and the rising of his nemesis, the sun.


	17. A Wolf and a Girl

**17. A Wolf and a Girl**

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><p><em><strong>an:** Thanks to those who Alerted or Favorited. A huge thank you to Vent and -MyOtherShoe. You brought a huge smile to my face, thank you!_

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><p>Alcide waited on the steps. He heard Arin inside making breakfast and knocked on the door. She opened it with one of her rare smiles. "Hey, I'm glad to see you're okay. I was worried about you when you didn't show up yesterday."<p>

"Ah, Eric had me doing something else yesterday. I'm sorry no one thought to let you know."

"Oh, that's okay. Come on in. Oh, who's this?" she knelt down beside the werewolf with him.

"That's Tracy. She'll be helping me look after you today."

"She's beautiful. I didn't know you had a dog, I never thought to ask."

"She's more like a friend, really," Alcide told her, more for Tracy's benefit and dignity than anything else. Weres were very conscious of dignity.

Although, that was why he'd chosen Tracy. She was young enough still to be exuberant and willing to play now and then, yet not so young that she couldn't handle being in a dangerous situation.

"You're lovely! Yes you are, yes you are! You want a treat? I have some delicious hamburger in the fridge that you will just love. Yes you will, yes you will!" She was rubbing vigorously along Tracy's ruff.

Alcide felt a stab of jealousy. Despite the baby talk, the woman had a definite knowledge of exactly how a dog—and thus a wolf-formed 'were—liked to be touched and rubbed. Tracy was even wagging her tail, and Alcide grinned. It had been very, very hard not to wag his own the day before.

He'd tried to warn Tracy, but some things you just had to experience for yourself.

Arin went to the refrigerator and got out some ground meat. It smelled like bison. She put some into a bowl and some on a plate. She fired up the stove and heated a bit of lard. He watched in surprise as she dropped the meat from the plate into the lard, turning it twice. Why buy the lean meat and put fat back into it. He said nothing, though.

She sat the bowl down in front of Tracy, and Alcide hid a grin. There was no way that Tracy was going to eat that. She was a germaphobe, a peculiar and even potentially dangerous trait for a werewolf. He and some of the others who had formed a loose pack of loners had tried to get her past it for over a year.

Arin looked at Tracy, who refused to even sniff the meat. "What's the matter, Alcide doesn't give you raw meat? Shame on you, Alcide!" she chided him.

He threw up his hands at the unfair accusation. "Hey, I don't decide what she eats, she has a mind of her own!"

"You know what your problem is? You don't understand dogs." She laid down beside the bowl with a fork in her hand.

"Look, girl. Your teeth aren't made for kibble. You're a wolf! You're supposed to be tearing up meat with those teeth! It'll strengthen your neck and your jaw muscles. Cooked food doesn't have enough nutrients for you. And no matter what they try to tell Alcide, the truth is that it's not kibble that prevents your teeth from rotting out, it's meat!"

She picked up some of the meat and Alcide watched with interest. "Look here, it's delicious. Just smell it. That's all. Smell that? This kind of meat is sweet, not savory." To his surprise, Tracy sniffed at the meat Arin offered. "Mmm, see? It smells great, doesn't it? You know, wolves can't be afraid of raw meat. It's just not healthy. Even people should eat it." She took a bite of the raw meat. Alcide stared.

"Here," she said after a moment of chewing. "Give it a try. Just one little try."

Tentatively, Tracy took the tiny bit of meat off of the fork. Then, her base nature took over and she shoved her face into the bowl of meat and started wolfing it down.

"See," Arin told him. "You just can't treat them like animals. Dogs don't know they're animals, they think they're humans. If you treat them like they are, they'll respond to that."

Alcide covered up a grin with a great deal of difficulty. Arin sat down and ate her own meat, barely less raw than what Tracy was eating.

Tracy finished and sat licking the bowl and then her muzzle.

"You still hungry?" Arin asked.

Tracy thumped the ground with her tail. Arin gave her more meat, and Alcide watched, surprised, as she ate all of it.

"You just watch," Arin told him. "She's going to have all kinds of energy today. She'll be in a good mood, too. Raw meat gives dogs endorphines."

"Come on, girl! Let's go for a walk!"

Tracy leaped up and followed Arin out the door, with a single backward glance to Alcide that said as clear as words, "Don't you dare say it!"

He followed them out and stood on the porch, looking out over the lawn as Arin walked with Tracy running around her in circles. She went into the bar and came out a while later, carrying a bucket of milk. Tracy stayed at her heels the whole time. True to Arin's words, she seemed to be in a good mood and surprisingly excited to be around a human who talked to werewolves like they were newborns.

After the chores were done, Arin picked up a stick. She didn't throw it yet, she just teased Tracy with it. Then she started running around with it. Eventually, she started throwing it, and Alcide found himself laughing at their antics.

Arin had not only convinced Tracy to play 'fetch' with her, but had her rolling on the ground and wrestling, another peculiar activity for a generally fussy and rather prim and proper werewolf. Arin was fast, too, and there were times when Tracy barely caught her. She would dodge quickly and race in a whole new and unexpected direction.

Around noon, she stopped Tracy, patting and rubbing her, still with the baby-talk that both irritated Alcide and made him smile.

"Would you like something to eat?" she asked him, her face quiet and placid as usual, her eyes studying him with a directness that made him uncomfortable.

"Sure," he answered. He felt the same disquiet rising up within him again that he'd gotten around her the first day he met her. He couldn't tell at all what she was thinking or feeling. Nothing at all seemed to come from her, she was totally calm and emotionless when she wasn't playing with or petting a werewolf.

He grinned as he thought she needed to have werewolves around her all the time to make her more human. She blinked at him and smiled in return. It was a hesitant, but real smile, not one of the sweet but seemingly habitual smiles upon meeting a person.

He said, "I'll take a burger the way you made yours this morning."

"Okay," she answered him. He saw that ghost of emotion cross her face, surprise followed by the typical indifference she displayed.

He pondered what Eric had said. Maybe she didn't know how to express herself, or perhaps she was just trying not to make everyone around her feel strange. If it was the last, it wasn't working. She was a particularly odd duck.

He stood outside while Tracy followed her into the house and wondered what it was that Eric seemed to be so interested in about her. Aside from being more than passably pretty and smelling nice, she was off-putting.

He went in to find her chatting away at Tracy.

"You know, that was pretty clever, the way you kept jumping on my legs instead of my back. Most dogs aren't that smart. You're going to go a long way in the world with the brains you've got."

He barely covered a snicker at her words.

"And I'll tell you, the other animals like you, too. That's something special right there, also. You're not one of those annoying barking dogs, either. Best manners I've seen in a long time, between you and that pretty fellow yesterday."

She set a bowl down in front of Tracy, who eagerly scarfed the meat in it.

"You should eat aged meat, too, you know," she told Tracy. "I'll try to talk Alcide into trying it for you. In the wild, that's how dogs get the bacteria their guts need. They bury their prey and eat it over days. It gives them minerals and it keeps their guts healthy."

Tracy ignored her, and Alcide could almost see her stomach churning at the idea of aged meats.

"You're going to spoil her," he told Arin. "She's not used to all that raw meat and all that attention."

Tracy gave him a dirty look before returning to her food.

"She's a good girl. She deserves it. She's got excellent manners. You take good care of her."

"She's not mine," Alcide reminded her.

"Well, your friend takes good care of her," Arin answered. She squatted down beside Tracy. "I bet you take good care of your human, too, don't you, you sweety? Yes you do, yes you do!"

Alcide ate his burger, enjoying the mostly raw meat that he typically had to forgo in the presence of humans.

Arin sat down across from him and ate quietly, not speaking. He found her silence as disconcerting as her expressionless face.

"Is there anything you'd like to do?"

It was unexpected, and he sat his fork down. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, I don't own a TV, so I can't offer for you to watch that. I do have a computer and some games, if you enjoy that kind of thing? Or if you want to go for a walk. I know I'm kind of awkward company, but it's pretty land. I have movies on DVD you could watch on the computer. I can't imagine watching me play with a dog is all that entertaining. The laptop plays movies if you need to be on the porch."

It all came out in a rush as if she was unused to talking, or unused to talking to humans, anyway. She had no problem telling dogs anything and everything. He felt irritated with Eric for not letting him be in his wolf form.

"I'll take you up on the laptop," he decided.

She smiled, that strangely sincere yet seemingly there only because it was the proper time to smile. "I'll get it right out for you."

She cleaned up quickly from lunch and then brought him a laptop and a surprisingly large case of movies. "Please feel free to help yourself to anything you wish from the kitchen. I do not have frequent guests, but I do keep colas just in case. There are also teas and a coffee maker—if you want coffee, you should make it yourself because everyone says I suck at it." She chuckled. "By 'everyone', of course, I mean my publicist and my editor. But the consensus has stuck for many years."

She smiled again, and looked like a skittery colt for a moment. "Well, I'm going to be outside."

She went out, Tracy following. Alcide took up his position on the porch. He found a movie and watched it, realizing after a few minutes that Arin and Tracy had grown quiet. He looked up to see them sprawled on the grass, Tracy's head resting on Arin's ribcage and Arin running her fingers through her ruff.

He paused the movie and watched them for a moment. Arin was chatting away to Tracy as she had to him the day before. He tuned his hearing out towards them.

"-I think he'll probably kill me tonight or tomorrow. He can't remain focused with me around. I tried to tell him from the start, but I was just a stupid human. No way he was going to listen to me.

"Then again, you know, I'm used to that. Everyone who reads my blog tries to push me into one camp or the other. The vampires think I'm against them and the humans think I'm against them. They don't understand the larger picture.

"Anyway, he definitely thinks I'm crazy. And I distract him. Sometimes his fangs come out against his will around me. He can't have that, you know. Any sign of lack of control is potentially dangerous for him."

Tracy licked her face and Arin laughed, a gentle, unhappy laugh. "Yes, you're right. I do care for him." Tracy laid her head back down, and Arin went on, "I thought he was the one. I thought he was the vampire who could help me fight the Ancients. It has to be one who's on the right path, though. He has the potential, but he has chosen the wrong one. I should have seen it sooner. Now it's too late."

"Awww, don't give me puppy eyes. I knew what I was getting into when I started blogging." She chuckled sadly. "You don't care, you just know I'm sad, huh, sweet girl. You've got great manners and you're very sensitive and intelligent."

She fell silent then, and moved over into the shade of a tree.

A half hour later, Tracy walked up behind him, dressed again.

"She said Eric's going to kill her," she told him.

"I heard her," Alcide answered. His eyes met hers and he saw the question there. "No, Tracy. We can't. He'll kill us and our families, too."

She looked away. "It doesn't seem fair, somehow."

"Life isn't fair," Alcide answered, sighing and leaning forward in his chair. "She likes you a lot. Just keep her company for now. It's all either of us have to offer. She's scared of people, but she likes dogs."

Tracy nodded. "She's sleeping for now."

"Want to watch this with me til she gets up?"

They watched the rest of that movie, and two more. Arin finally started to stir as evening shadows crept across the yard. Tracy raced up to her, clearly in a playful mood. Arin laughed and began to chase her down to get the stick back.

Alcide sat back to watch. Arin was completely different than she was around any human or even vampire he'd seen her around. She was almost childlike, her face animated and open and free. She laughed and played with complete abandon, almost as if she had forgotten anyone but herself and Tracy.

"Fetch?" Eric asked from behind him. "Is she playing 'fetch' with that werewolf?"

She was racing toward the house. She looked up and saw Eric and stopped to wave at him. Tracy took advantage of her distraction and tackled her. She fell with a shriek of laughter and Eric snarled.

Alcide took a chance and placed his hand on the vampire's chest. Eric glared at him, fangs out.

"She's okay. She's happy and having fun." Alcide dropped his hand. "Just watch."

"She's laughing." Eric sounded surprised.

"Is she upset?"

"She's happy."

"Let her be happy for a while, then. If she's going to die anyway, what will it hurt?"

"She told you?"

"She told Tracy and I listened."

"If she's right about Vincent and Vinciente, then Vinciente will try to kill me. If he succeeds, everyone here will be in danger from a vampire that technically does not exist. This is the opposite of what she wants, because it will give them a greater excuse to catalogue and inventory us."

Alcide conceded the point with a sigh. "I still say let her enjoy what time she has left without running out there to rescue her from a playing wolf. It's also kind of backwards. Why do you keep saving her when you want her dead, anyway?"

"I do not know," Eric answered.

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><p><em>Additional an, contains spoilers: MyOtherShoe, I know exactly what you mean. But I have to confess that I feel really sorry for poor Bill, too... *sniffles*_


	18. The Breath of the Ocean

**18. The Breath of the Ocean**

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><p><em><strong>an: **Thanks again for the reviews! They really make my day. :) I also appreciate those favoriting and alerting on the story._

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><p>Arin finally tired, and flopped on the ground. She buried her head in Tracy's fur as the wolf collapsed beside her, panting. "I have to go to him now," she murmured softly. "You are such a sweetheart. Someone is lucky to have you, and has obviously raised you with a great deal of love." She scratched her behind the ears one more time.<p>

Standing up, she dusted herself off, restoring her clothing to the best of her ability. Then she turned and walked toward Eric, standing in the shadows and watching her with his face shrouded in the darkness of the porch roof.

She felt apprehensive. Not for fear of her life, but at the thought of facing him again after the night before. His arms around her had made her feel safe, made her feel like hope and a future was possible.

"Eric," she greeted him, her heart warming.

"Arin," he answered.

She suddenly felt awkward as well as apprehensive. So she did what she always did. She took a deep breath to quell her emotions and hid behind a serene facade.

"You can go," he told Alcide.

She saw the other man hesitate, look at her, and then leave with an obvious air of resignation.

Alcide's van pulled out of her driveway. Eric simply stood staring at her. So she stood staring back, uncertain and insecure. Then he clicked open his cell phone and spoke in a strange language. She watched him as he spoke, his eyes never leaving her.

The night was overly hot and she found herself longing for a cool shower. She walked past him into the house. He made no move to stop her.

When she had showered, she began looking through her closet. Finally, she settled on a pair of jeans and a shirt with flowing, open sleeves. She looked at herself in the mirror and wondered if she was losing her mind. She was trying to dress up for him in a way that didn't look like she was trying to dress up for him.

Her life was measured in hours now, and she was worried about how she looked. The woman in the mirror stared at her with her usual calm, unruffled look. Arin was laughing at herself and the only response visible was the deepening of the crow's feet around her eyes.

She tried on a smile. Would it impress him?

Then she shook her head. She was acting like a high school girl hoping to get asked to the prom, and the 'boy' she was hoping would ask her was a thousand years old.

"Does she answer you?"

She whirled to find him leaning against the door to her room.

She looked back at the dark haired woman in the mirror with her direct blue eyes and her slender body. "Never. She just stares at me."

"Perhaps you are not asking her the right questions."

"Maybe you should try. I've never had any luck with her." She grinned at him, enjoying the surprised look on his face.

She found herself turned to face the mirror, with Eric's body pressed against her back.

"Dear Lady in the Mirror-" Eric said, holding her gaze through the mirror.

"Isn't it supposed to start with 'Mirror, Mirror on the wall'?"

"Don't interrupt, Arin. It is rude. I'm trying to have a moment with the magic mirror." He cleared his throat and started over, "Dear Lady in the Mirror, How can I convince Arin to be Mine for tonight?" He nuzzled her hair after a few seconds of silence. "No, she's not very helpful, is she."

Arin's heart was racing. A longing rose in her, shadowed by her over-active sex drive and driven by her over-imaginative heart.

Speaking through the lump in her throat, she told him, "Weren't we discussing you killing me so you won't die to Vinciente?"

"He won't come tonight. He's toying with me. Morning is hours away. I know what I have to do, Arin. I just... I want you to let me out of my promise and I want to spend those hours with you."

"No." Her heart shattered with the word, but she knew it was the right thing.

"No? You can't say 'no'." But his voice was pleading. "I know you want it, too. Why do you fight it?"

"Remember what I told you, Eric? I won't have meaningless, empty sex simply to gratify my desires. I want it to mean something. I'd rather do nothing than have a shallow, empty encounter just before I die."

"I can smell how much you want me. I can feel how much you want me. How can you call that meaningless?"

"I know you think that souls don't exist, Eric. But I know that giving myself to you simply because it feels good will destroy mine. I either have a purpose in this life, and it will require that act to be one of significance, or I have no purpose in this life and I will die at your hands. If my life is without purpose, I still intend to live it in such a manner that as my chapter closes I feel I've lived with integrity."

He turned her around and rested his forehead against hers. "Then we won't have sex. We'll go to the beach or we'll go to Fangtasia. Whatever you want to do. Be Mine and I will take you anywhere you want to go and we'll be back by morning."

"No. You think you are asking one thing of me, Eric. But what you are asking is beyond what you realize. You are asking for more than my agreement." He was asking for her soul. He didn't know it, but she did. Casual words, casual agreements... with consequences that reached into lifetimes beyond this one. "I will not go into my next life anchored to this one."

"Arin Jorgenson, you may be the death of me yet," Eric told her, his voice sad and confused.

"No," she told him. She closed her eyes and stepped against him, embracing him. Fear rose in her. She would not be his death. "We will go to the beach tonight, and in the morning, you will kill me. I will not be the cause of your death."

"Are you afraid?" he was shocked. He lifted her face so that he could look into her eyes when she nodded. "You are not afraid _of_ me. You are afraid for me?"

She nodded and looked away. He pulled her close and wrapped his hand around her head to hold her against his chest. No heart beat there. It was cool and hard and silent beneath her ear. A foreboding shadow crossed her and she realized that she had grown attached to Eric Northman. She had purposefully avoided attachments so that she would not know fear or suffering, according to the teachings of the Buddha.

Now she knew fear because she had let him into her heart. It was not right to realize it on the night she was to die.

"So will you take me to the beach anyway?" Left unsaid was, 'even though I will not agree to give you my soul tonight?'.

She was swept up into his arms before she realized he had moved and they were out the door. The world swam by in an indistinct blur and she was set down abruptly. She clutched him, fighting disorientation and nausea.

"Sorry," he said.

"I had rather thought we would drive," she answered, bending over and gulping air.

When she had recovered sufficiently, she turned to look around her. He had brought her to a secluded section of beach beside a fairly large beach house. Moonlight glittered over the water from a moon that hung huge and low over the water. It wasn't quite full yet, but it would be soon. Its blue craters and stripes were easily visible. The water swished against the shore, and she stood still, breathing in the salt scent of the breeze.

"Where are we?"

"At my beach house," he told her.

"This is a private beach?"

"Yes."

She closed her eyes and lifted her arms out to her side to let the air sweep over them. Her shirt fluttered around her, and she smiled. She unbuttoned it and let it drop, following it with her bra.

"Change your mind?" Eric asked.

"I'm going swimming," she told him, pulling her pants and panties off and tossing them on the pile. "You're a thousand years old, you can control yourself."

She heard the click of his fangs and grinned at him. "Generally speaking."

She ran for the water, not caring if he followed. The water sang its siren's song to her and she responded in the only way any reasonable person could. She fell into it and let it wrap all around her. Laughing, she played in the waves. Then she was lifted and tossed into the water, and she shrieked with laughter again.

Surfacing, she splashed him, "Do that again!"

"Demanding little thing, aren't you."

"Yes," she laughed. "Now do it again!"

She was thrown into the water, brushing against his body as he picked her up and tossed her. Lust ignited in her, but she ignored it. For the next hour, she played with the waves like a little kid, until finally she'd had her fill of jumping in them, over them, and through them.

She laid back and let the water lift and carry her. Eric's face loomed over her in the night sky.

"You look like a Goddess, floating in the water like that," he told her.

She blinked up at him. "Are you flying?"

"Technically speaking, I'm hovering," he answered.

He was as naked as she was, and obviously as aroused as she was. True to his word, he was hovering over her as she floated on her back in the water. Moonlight threw him into stark relief, accentuating the lean, corded muscles of his body. Droplets of water, gleaming and shimmering as they fell, dripped from his naked body to the water around her in glittering droplets.

"You're beautiful," she whispered softly to him.

She was plucked from the water and on the beach in an instant. He held her against his body as they stood on the beach and he kissed her, his hands and his lips possessive yet questioning.

He pulled back, and she swayed against him, her resolve clinging only by tattered ruins.

"I do not want you to die," he told her, his voice quiet in the whispering, ocean-scented breeze.

"And yet, I must, because otherwise, I would have to live without you and be just as dead."

No sooner were the words spoken than the truth of them were imprinted on her heart. He was on the wrong path. He was not the vampire she was looking for. But it didn't matter. Without him, her life would be meaningless and her emotions made him weak.

She stepped back. "I am ready, Eric."

His face was streaked with tears.


	19. Too Late for Regret

**19. Too Late for Regret**

He took her home and left her sitting on the porch as he went inside. He called Alcide and told him that he wouldn't be needed that day. He could barely speak.

Dawn was only minutes away, and he was out of time. A human had turned his life upside down, and he knew that he was going to regret killing her for the rest of his life. He clicked the phone shut... and felt the presence of another vampire.

He was at the door in time to see a streak disappearing between the trees.

In that instant, the sun broke the trees and he stumbled into the house, his face badly burnt and his clothes falling off of him in ashes. It was too late for him to follow. Somewhere out there on the road, Arin was no doubt being held by humans or werewolves in a van while Vinciente lay safely within a travel coffin. That's what Eric would have done, so he had no doubt it was exactly what the other vampire had done.

Eric had delayed and delayed and now Vinciente had her. By that night, she would be tucked into some stronghold, if Vinciente did anything remotely like what Eric himself would do. His weakness in waiting to kill her had already cost him. He cursed himself for a twice damned fool and staggered to the bedroom, closing the door and falling on the bed.

He had no time to bury himself, and he regretted the lack. In his foolish desire to indulge himself with a human, he had jeopardized everyone and everything in the Shreveport area, including the woman he'd stupidly spent the night with instead of killing.

Now, instead of being bait to capture Vinciente, she was Vinciente's bait to capture Eric.

He turned on the bed, knowing he was ruining it, but knowing as well that Arin would doubtless never know of it. Lying on his back, he despaired. Pain screamed through his body even as his heart tore apart. Because he had indulged himself with a human, an undocumented vampire would tear the region apart. His heart bled for his Progeny. Pam would be torn apart in excruciating pain, devoured by the older vampire.

Even Bill Compton and his Progeny would be devoured and torn asunder. Every human here would be eaten—either by Vinciente himself, or by his werewolves.

It wasn't that he cared about the humans, he told himself. It was that Vinciente was over-stepping himself by pillaging Eric's Area.

Once Eric was gone, Vinciente would be the most powerful vampire in North America and the infighting was still much more intense than it was in Europe. They would be too busy jockeying with each other for political gain from Eric's death to fight the greater threat that Vinciente presented.

Eric could fight the sleep of day no longer. Blood from The Bleeds mingled with the blood of his regret and his pain was intensifying.

Darkness much like that which threatened all of his Area, fell across him like the black wings of a crow.


	20. Recruitment

**20. Recruitment**

Eric ignored the humans with guns surrounding Bill's mansion. He was in Bill's office before they could even react to his presence.

"Excuse us," he told the human guard there, picking him up and throwing him out the door.

He saw Bill's upraised hand stopping the man from opening fire even as he shut the door.

"Vinciente is here and he has stolen my human. We must attack before he consolidates his base further."

Bill leaned back in his chair. "Well, hello, Eric."

Eric scowled. "My liege." He bowed a scant, cursory bow.

"Vinciente is in Spain. Andalucía, to be precise."

"No, that's Vincent. Vinciente is here while his identical twin masquerades as him." Eric shifted. "He has stolen my human, I presume thinking that doing so will cause me to hesitate. Although he may have taken her simply because of what she knows about vampires."

"He doesn't know you well, does he?" Bill chuckled, a sound without humor.

"I need your help," Eric admitted, tasting the bitterness of the admittance on his tongue and in his pride.

"It's just a human," Bill said, narrowing his eyes and staring at Eric.

"There is much more at stake here than any human," Eric reasoned with him. "If Vinciente kills me, he will be the most powerful vampire in North America. And undocumented."

That certainly got Bill's attention. As King of Louisiana, the younger vampire had a lot to lose if an older, more powerful vampire was in the area, especially an undocumented one that was outside of the purview of The Authority.

"You will owe me, Eric," Bill told him.

Eric's fangs snapped out. Bill's responded.

"I am protecting your own interests, My Liege," he said the last mockingly. "Why would I owe you for that?"

"I think you are protecting yours, and mine happen to coordinate with them this time around," Bill informed him. "You are welcome to petition someone else to aid you in rescuing your human."

Eric was frustrated. Bill was playing games with him. But he had guessed correctly, to Eric's detriment this time around. It mattered little, though. When he was done with Vinciente, he would be weak and Bill would finally get to kill him, anyway. Nothing he didn't deserve for his lapse in judgment.

The other vampire did not have the years to end him in a fair conflict, but would take advantage of any opportunity, and he was about to get a golden one.

"Fine."

Bill's face hid his surprise well—but not so well that Eric missed it.

"We must go immediately. The longer we wait, the more time he will have to consolidate his defenses. He has been preparing all along, so no doubt they are already formidable."

Eric had pulled every string he had in the area. He'd used his influence over the AVL forces. He had paid off the Shreveport PD to turn a blind eye. He had called in the local werewolves with both threats and promises.

Between them, he and Bill had a veritable army at their disposal. Men and vampires stood loosely around the parking lot of Fangtasia. Two werewolf packs in their human form stood glaring and growling at each other. Loners, such as Tracy and Alcide, stood in the perimeter.

"You're serious about this," Bill remarked.

"He will be well fortified," Eric responded. "This is a war."

Bill looked at him quietly. Eric kept his expression entirely blank.

"You must really like this human," Bill needled him.

"You see, Bill, that's your problem. Your throne is threatened and your Area is under threat, and you're worrying about a human."

Bill flicked his hand and hopped into the passenger seat of Eric's sportscar. Eric slammed the driver's door and pulled out. The strange militarized convoy was on the move.

"So who is she? You said she knows about vampires, or does she just know about him?"

"Arin Jorgenson," Eric answered, curt and short. He did not want to explain further.

Bill's surprise was almost palpable in the confines of the car. "The Conspiracy blogger?"

"You've read her stuff?" It was Eric's turn for surprise.

"Of course. She posits some interesting and potentially concerning theories."

"You don't seem the type to indulge anti-vampire extremist sites, Bill."

Bill Compton managed to surprise him yet again that night. "She doesn't seem particularly anti-vampire to me. If anything, I think she has the most pragmatic view of us of any human I've seen."

"Including Sookie?"

"Especially Sookie," Bill told him. "Sookie definitely has strong pro-vampire views. Except towards me."

Eric actually felt for the younger vampire, though he would never admit it aloud. "You love her still."

"She's gone, Eric. You know that. You felt it."

"She's still out there somewhere, Bill. I know she is, and I know you love her."

"Fairy tales do not come true, Mr. Northman. You have been alive long enough to know that as well as I do."

Eric shrugged. "Suit yourself. But believe me, I am certain she remains alive somewhere."

Silence reigned in the car for quite some time. Finally, Eric broke it with the truth. "Arin does not expect to be rescued. If she survives, I cannot permit her to live."

Bill looked at him. "The AVL has forbidden-"

"I know, Bill. But she knows too much. She knows more than most vampires do. She knew about Vincent and Vinciente, when even you and I did not. She is dangerous."

"She can be contained," Bill answered. "She's an ordinary human, isn't she?"

"She's definitely human, but I would say that she is anything but ordinary. She is brilliant. A very keen mind. Which is why she cannot be permitted to live."

"You know my view and the view of the AVL, Eric. You risk the True Death if you kill her."

"With what she knows, Bill, that is a risk I will take. I will risk it tonight with Vinciente, and in the unlikely event that I survive that, it is better that I die than that the secrets she knows get out."

Silence fell, punctuated only by the sound of the wind and the muted rumble of the Competizione's engine.

"I cannot protect you if you are discovered for killing her," Bill told him. "Would it not be better to simply glamor her knowledge away? Is not Pam especially skilled at glamoring?"

"She cannot be glamored."

"That does present a problem," Bill agreed. He was quiet a moment before he asked, "She truly does not expect you to save her?"

"I was going to kill her before... before he took her. He took her at dawn so I could not follow. I can feel her resignation and acceptance."

"No doubt he will torture what she knows out of her."

"He has tortured her already. I doubt that he got anything from her."

"You can't possibly know."

"If she had given him what he wanted, she would not linger so near death." Eric felt her pain and shock. She was dying. No doubt Vinciente thought that would push Eric to hurry so that he could not be framed properly this time. "She was a trap to begin with. He beat her near death and left her in my dumpster, hoping the police would think I had killed her and tried to make it look like a human did it. It's entirely possible that he already knows she knows so much, and that was why he chose her to be my supposed victim to begin with."

"Well, I suppose you may be right, she does not try to hide what she knows."

"Yes, she does. She knows far more than she puts on that website of hers."

"My, my, Eric, you almost sound smitten with this human." Bill's voice didn't carry the smugness that should have been there.

"There are more important factors involved. Whatever feelings I may or may not have for her are unimportant in the face of an undocumented seven hundred year old vampire nesting in the Area." He didn't want to talk about her.

In part because her feelings throbbed in the background, and it was clear that she was doing her best to suppress them. There was pain, fatigue, a dull anger, and that deep-seated resignation that seemed to replace fear in her in normal circumstances that warranted it. She also felt despair and a tragic sense of failure that gnawed at him like a hound baying down a fox hole and trying to dig it out.

They drove in silence. He could feel that they were getting close, but she was weakening fast.

He pulled the car over and the convoy stopped behind him. They were looking down on a gated, fenced compound. Getting out, he flew up and took a quick look around, not concerned about Vinciente knowing he was there—no doubt he already did.

Then he returned and began to draw a coarse layout of the compound from his bird's eye view. He laid out a plan, with Bill occasionally adding ideas or pointing out considerations.

He was hit by a sudden, shocking surge of rage so pure and so intense that his teeth clicked out and he roared. There was white-hot rage, denial, rejection, and an open spite so at odds with the woman it was coming from that Eric staggered. Then, as if she knew the cost to him, the feelings were suppressed, subsumed by that sense of a serene lake.

"What is it?"

"I think they may have started raping her," Eric told him.


	21. 21 Myth Busting

**21. Myth Busting**

"You will drink it," the vampire told her. He held his open wrist over her mouth. "You will drink it and I will always be able to find you."

Utter revulsion and disgust rolled through her along with sheer hate and a burning fury such as she couldn't remember having felt in years. She did not want to be defiled by this monster's blood. She knew he was a long way from becoming a soul eater, but he was far more firmly on the path toward it than Eric was—and he was definitely on it.

Vinciente looked charming, urbane, civilized. But he exuded a supernatural evil that dwarfed any she had seen from any other vampire... except two. She had seen Russel Edgington on TV when he had murdered the reporter. And the Ancient who had killed her family had carried the darkest sense of evil she'd ever seen—worse than any she could have imagined.

So she fought them as two men held her head. Even tied down, they muttered about her strength. It was a strength born of revulsion and determination and fueled by an adrenaline-laced rage.

But she was only human, she was outnumbered, she was tied down, and she was facing a monster of unimaginable strength.

"He should have killed you," Vinciente remarked. His blood dripped into her open mouth. "I thought you would die before he even got to you. And even now, he surprises me. He has come straight here. He must have saved you himself. How else could he have come so unerringly to the right place."

Her mouth was held shut and her nose pinched off until she swallowed and then gasped for air upon her release. Realizing it was futile and she could not stop him, she instead banked her emotions, using that moment before it seeped into her to calm herself to the best of her ability.

"There can be only one reason he's here. He wants me to kill you. He's trying to force my hand. Which means there's some reason why you being alive will benefit me." He wagged a finger at her. "I think you know why."

For the next few minutes, her freshly healed body was beaten severely again. The V in her continually healed it, so it was a steady march of pain, healing, pain, healing. She lost herself to the rhythm of it, seeking to control her emotions, to subjugate them, to soothe them. She made herself experience the pain as if it were just another sensation. She'd been abused enough as a child to learn the trick, and she focused on using it now.

"Stop. This is not doing any good. She isn't reacting to it at all."

She was, but she had learned early on that eventually your emotions showed if you didn't control them. So she stared at him, not even allowing herself to experience the hatred and revulsion she felt toward him.

"You have answered my question," he told her. "He wants you back because you are unbroken." He grabbed her hair and jerked it backward. "It would be any vampire's pleasure to break one such as you. The greater the resistance, the sweeter the victory."

She spat in his face. He laughed and wiped it away.

"When I have killed him and taken what should have been mine all along, I promise you this; I will break you. I will strip you of your humanity until you are a crawling, broken thing. Your will is unusually strong, but it is as nothing against mine. I may even keep him in silver and let him watch as I destroy what he could not." His smile was a caricature of treachery and triumph. "He will see the plaything he could not subjugate, groveling at my feet and begging to serve me."

She felt like laughing, so she did, remembering how much it had irritated Eric.

"You think that's funny, cunt?"

"Why, yes, I do. You would be a perfect b-rate actor with your melodrama and your posturing."

One of his minions hit her in the side and she laughed aloud, coughing slightly as he punched her again.

"Stop. It doesn't bother her. But I know what will."

He whispered something to a man at his side and smiled at Arin, a grotesquely self-satisfied smile.

A moment later, a wolf was dragged in, fighting and snarling at the end of two chains that kept her away from her captors, one on each side of her. "You do recognize her, don't you? She was trying to sneak in. It would seem Eric sent a girl-child to do a man's work."

It was Tracy. It took everything in her heart and soul and every ounce of her willpower for Arin to stare, impassive and unemotional, as they kicked her and beat her.

He sighed. "Stop." He walked around Arin. "You played with that 'were all day, according to reports. And yet, you feel nothing for her at all."

Arin let her surprise escape, tamping down with all her will on the rest of her boiling emotions.

He laughed, a hard, barking, cruel sound. "You didn't know? She's a werewolf. So are these men. She, like them, will serve me in time. One of them will rape her and she will bear a pup. When she does, her fate will be sealed. Wolf loyalty to family is nearly unbreakable. Astounding, really."

"Leave her there for now. She's of no use to us."

Arin looked away as Tracy lay panting and in obvious pain on the ground. Compassion warred within her, fighting for its rightful place in her heart. Shoving it ruthlessly back was getting harder with every passing moment as Tracy whined and whimpered with pain.

"Oh, someone shut her up."

Arin chuckled, creating amusement and letting it bubble up. He was so predictably 'b-rate villain'.

"Stop," he ordered. "What's so funny?"

"I'd have thought you would be smarter by now, that's all."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Carry on," she told him.

His eyes narrowed and he glared at her. "You're trying to trick me."

This time, when she laughed, it was genuine. "You're that easily tricked? I'll keep that in mind."

"You think yourself clever, but you are not. I know you care nothing for her. You think to goad me in some way."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Goad you? Whatever would be my motivation?"

"You want me to kill her. Why?"

"Me? No, no. You just said I don't care about her. You'd know if I hated her."

"Yes, I would. But you were amused. Like I was doing something you wanted me to do. You expected that... it was not a surprise. You have some sort of plan, I can feel it, I can sense it."

Arin scoffed. "What can I do? How could I execute any such plan?" She tried to tamp down the rising apprehension. "I'm trapped here. Strapped down. What possible danger could I be to you?"

But he was smiling. A devious smile with that familiar edge of triumph.

"Hold the wolf." He stepped down and dropped blood into her mouth as it was forced open.

Arin tried to focus on the fact that it was the blood of a monster being forced into her friend's throat.

He chuckled as her anger and hate of him slipped through her careful control—just as much as she wanted to, and a bit more, because the fight to contain her feelings was a slowly losing battle.

He ran a hand down Arin's cheek. "What will you do now, precious little plaything? Whom did you expect to react to her death? Hmm?"

Gunfire erupted outside. "Ah, he's here, your vampire master. Come to kill me and finish you off, I suppose. I am ever so gracious a host, I admit, but only when one doesn't come with such a selfish agenda." He turned, "Lucius, go kill his weres."

All around her, men turned into wolves as they divested themselves of clothing. There was one more 'myth' permanently altered in her mind. She'd always thought werewolves were supposed to turn into bestial half-human looking monsters. Not sweet, friendly, loving animals that would play with you in your yard so that your last days on Earth were that little bit brighter.

The room emptied quickly except for her and Tracy. She knew that Tracy would never understand, but she whispered softly, "I'm sorry." Arin was certain of one thing. The beating had been severe. But if she had reacted, it would have been worse.

Tracy didn't look at her, and Arin struggled against regret.


	22. Timing is Everything

**22. Timing is Everything**

Eric was surprised and worried. The defenses were not nearly what he expected. There was the remainder of Vinciente's pack of weres and a few human mercenaries with guns here and there. But aside from the weres, no more men came pouring out of the buildings.

They had their own casualties; two men and the one 'were that had been captured—not surprising since she was young, inexperienced, and over-eager. In retrospect, Eric regretted letting her come, but it was too late at this point.

Vinciente retreated into the central building, and Eric knew Arin lay inside, healed but subdued in some way that he didn't understand. It was as if she were trying not to feel anything. He almost smiled. That must be very taxing for her.

He listened inside. There were two heartbeats, and he knew that Vinciente was inside. He nodded to Bill, saying in a whisper that he knew would not carry inside, "If I fail, you must finish it."

Bill nodded, saying nothing in response.

Eric flew, and then dropped to the roof. Shoving his hand through, he ignored the wounds as they healed. He tore a hole in the roof and dropped into the room.

"Eric. You got my invitation, I see. How nice of you to come. It was foolish, though, you know. No matter which of us takes the blame for killing her, she will still have died at the hands of a vampire. But I don't think you want her dead just yet, do you? She's a delicious little plaything, I don't blame you."

Eric chuckled. "Do you like her? I find her annoying, demanding, and uncooperative, myself."

"Hmm, it's true. She's defiant, but she smells delicious. I could live for days on her scent alone."

"I quite agree. I had thought you'd decided to play procurer for me when I found her lying in my dumpster. However, your brother failed to teach you proper procurer manners." Eric stood and watched the other vampire as he started trying to circle around.

"She was supposed to die out there."

"Well, I suggest that next time you make sure the tongue is gone, not just bitten through. Very sloppy. One would think you'd know better by your age." He saw the other man's eyes narrow and knew he'd struck a nerve in some way.

"So why are you here?"

"Vampire on human violence is strictly forbidden, Vinciente," Eric replied. "I'm afraid that, as Sheriff of the Area, I am going to have to discipline you for being stupid enough to get caught indulging in it."

"So you have turned against us," Vinciente replied. "You, like that Bill Compton, are sniveling at Nan's feet, lapping at her cunt on command and wagging your tail like a good little dog?"

"Really, you're almost six hundred years old and you still don't have enough sense to know that petty insults are meaningless?"

"Seven hundred. I am over seven hundred fucking years old!"

"Hmmm, well." Eric smirked at him. "Then you really have no excuse, have you."

The mad light of insanity blazed in Vinciente's eyes. "Fuck you, Northman." His fangs clicked out and he hissed.

Eric snapped his out as well and laughed. "You can sure try, Little Man."

Vinciente attacked suddenly, and Eric dodged, shoving the smaller, dark man. Using his own momentum, he sent him flying into one of the wooden beams of the warehouse they were in. Vinciente ricocheted off of the pillar and into the wall, sending concrete raining down around him.

He stood up and shook it off. "Face me, you pussy," Vinciente demanded. "No more of your little tricks."

He rushed Eric and grappled him. Eric was the bigger, but Vinciente was built like a bull, with massive shoulders and thick, corded thighs. They struggled for a moment before Eric simply tucked and rolled, using a foot to send Vinciente flying over his head.

The pair were back up and facing each other immediately. Eric knew that he couldn't allow Vinciente to get close to him very often. His superior height and weight were assets, but he was not as strong in sheer muscle force as the other, younger vampire.

A few centuries did not give him the edge he needed against the other man's madness and his reckless physical strength.

Vinciente charged again, but Eric did not manage to deflect him. He was tackled with such force that the pair of them broke through two wooden beams before tumbling head over heels. Eric used the momentum to keep himself going past Vinciente so that he couldn't be grappled and wrestled.

Over their heads, the roof of the warehouse groaned and protested its missing supports. They both ignored it, intent upon each other. When Vinciente charged again, Eric tucked and rolled away, kicking the other vampire down the full length of the building between two rows of supports. Vinciente left a streak of gouged concrete behind him as he dug into the floor, trying to stop.

He turned, hissing, and yanked one of the supports up, snapping it into a manageable size against another beam, which cracked and snapped, sagging like a broken bone. The building rumbled and groaned around them.

Eric grabbed one of the broken beams beside him, not bothering with the waste of energy to break a new one. He grinned and sidestepped as Vinciente rushed him. To taunt the other vampire, who prided himself on his elegance and polish, he said, "I believe you have concrete in your hair, Vinciente."

But he had miscalculated. With a snarl, the other vampire ignored the beam between them and clocked Eric with his makeshift club, shearing the beam between them in half with the protesting groan of wood.

Eric flew into another beam behind him, snapping it and breaking his arm in the process. It immediately began to heal, the mangled bones jerking and twisting grotesquely in their work of regaining unity.

Falling to one knee, Eric found himself pressed by the other vampire, who swung his club with surprising efficiency, knocking Eric's feet out from under him. This time, though there was tremendous pain, the bones held up against the onslaught.

Eric rolled backward and darted around a pillar to give himself a chance to maneuver and regain his feet. Vinciente pressed his advantage, though, and Eric found himself weaving between pillars for a moment.

He doubled back, then kicked Vinciente's knee with all of his strength, using his vampiric speed to throw off his attacker. But the drawback to it was that although it broke Vinciente's knee, it also broke Eric's foot. Limping now, the pair circled again, wary and glaring.

But Eric had an additional handicap. He was trying to keep the fight away from Arin, and Vinciente had no such qualms.

The fighting outside had intensified, as well. Eric had no idea who was coming up on top, it was clear that the reinforcements had arrived, and the fighting was fierce. A bullet tore through the building, narrowly missing Vinciente's head. Pity, Eric thought. It might have given him an edge, if by startle factor alone.

"Fuck!" the other vampire snarled, jerking backward.

Eric didn't waste the moment. But he realized too late that he'd fallen for a feint. Vinciente's eyes gleamed and he stepped forward, the ragged, jagged beam he held slanted low.

Eric impaled himself on it, and it tore through his guts like a red hot iron. Eric groaned. It wasn't a killing blow, but it was beyond crippling. He grasped the other vampire, holding on with all of his strength, and began to pull him onto the beam from the opposite side.

Realizing his intent too late, Vinciente screamed and struggled. Eric's strength was fading fast, and he realized that he would never be able to trap the other vampire the way he was trapped.

He regretted that he had failed so many, many people.

Then, out of nowhere, he was struck by a wave of emotion so intense and powerful that he actually gasped aloud. He had forgotten, in the fight, that Arin had been fighting her emotions since he'd felt her healed by Vinciente.

It was not entirely unexpected for Eric. It caught Vinciente wholly by surprise, however. As he was struck by a near-blinding rage, his mighty grip loosened. Eric jerked the other man into his embrace, impaling him. But Vinciente was shorter than Eric; the beam took him in the heart, and Eric found himself holding blood and gore.

He toppled forward and knew no more.


	23. Incarceration

**23. Incarceration**

* * *

><p><em>Ugh, sorry for the delay. Having serious problems with the doc manager today. :(<em>

_Thank you for the awesome reviews, and for the favorites and alerts. :)_

* * *

><p>Arin jerked and yanked at her chains. Her wrists were already bloody from struggling during the fight, but now they ran freely with her blood as she fought to release herself. Nearby, she could hear Tracy yelping. The young werewolf had also fought and fought, but she had become so badly tangled in the chains holding her that Arin feared for her life.<p>

The worst, of course, was Eric. She could only hope against all hope that he was still alive. He lay slumped over the wooden beam, blood pooled around him.

The door suddenly slammed open, and another vampire flitted into the room. He didn't even notice her, even as one of her hands finally slipped free.

She quickly released herself, ignoring the biting pain. She watched the other vampire, who ignored her and looked over Eric.

She had no way of knowing if he were friend or foe.

Quickly, as quietly as she could move, she went to Tracy and removed her chains. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, tears falling down her face at the blood and wounds on the beautiful werewolf. "I couldn't think of any other way to stop him."

She looked up to see the other vampire standing over Eric's body. He was holding a beam in his hand and she realized that she shouldn't have ignored him. Fear for Eric filled her and she looked desperately for something—anything-that would hold him or stop him.

She settled on one of the chains she'd just removed from Tracy. She saw a broken piece of beam, and grabbed it up. Running, she dragged the chain and flung it just as his arm began to swing down. It wrapped around his arm and she yanked with all of her strength. His head snapped up and his fangs popped out. He looked at her over his shoulder.

She held the wood against his back. "I'll kill you if you do it," she told him, her voice quavering.

The next instant, he was snapping the wood in her face and the chain was wrapped around her. From behind her, she heard Tracy growling.

"You must be Miss Jorgenson. Let me give you a little advice, young lady. The next time that you hold a stake to a vampire's heart, you better use it while you have the chance. Because you will never get a second one." He dropped her unceremoniously to the floor.

Tracy growled and he stopped to look at her. "Sit," he commanded. Tracy sat. "Down," he told her. She obeyed.

With a sinking heart, Arin realized he was glamoring the werewolf. But she also held out hope that she still had a friend in the other woman—whom she'd never actually seen as a woman at all.

The vampire turned back and picked the beam back up. With a powerful blow, he broke the part of the beam that was sticking out of Eric's back off. He rolled Eric over with his foot and jerked the other part of the beam out of Eric's solar plexus.

A sigh of air escaped Eric, and he was still again.

A sob escaped Arin before she could stop it, and she struggled to master her emotions again, despite there being no one to feel them at the moment besides her.

"He'll live, provided he gets buried soon," the other vampire told her. "I'm Bill Compton, by the way."

"The King?" Arin asked.

He looked at her strangely. "Eric's right. You do know more than you should."

Men entered the room, and Arin's heart fell.

"Bring them. Bury him and watch the site until tomorrow night."

Arin was lifted, still wrapped in the bruising chain. Eric was lifted as well, his head swinging freely, lifeless and unresponsive.

She was dropped into the back of a van beside him, and she buried her face on his shoulder and cried, keeping her tears as silent as she could. Better that no one be certain she was weeping, for people always hated other people's emotions, and men in particular could be impatient with the sound of a woman crying.

By the time they reached their destination, she had rolled over onto her back and was staring at the roof of the van, as much in command of herself and her emotions as she could manage to get. She was dragged out and the chain removed. Soon, she found herself in a cold metal cell with bright lights.

Not a word was said to her, and she didn't care. She looked up and saw the camera, small and state-of-the art, high in the corner of the cell. She turned her back on it and refused to cry again.

The eerie silence that surrounded her was unbroken, and soon she curled up on the small cot in the room and slept. She dreamt of Eric and moonlight and sweetly scented breezes. She woke when food was brought and asked for water. More was brought to her, and she ignored the food and drank all of the water.

She slept again, the day running together into a series of naps interspersed with hours spent on her back staring and trying not to count the hours until she might learn of her own fate. And more importantly, of Eric's.

The only indication that night had come came in the form of the King. He stepped inside the cell and first tried to glamor her. When it failed, he told her to sit down and demanded a chair from the camera. It was brought and he sat in it staring at her for a while.

"You are a very dangerous human, Arin Jorgenson," he finally told her.

She had no idea what to say to that, so she sat and watched him watching her.

"Have you nothing to say in your defense?" he asked after a few moments had passed.

"I expected to be dead a long time ago, Mr. Compton. Or do I call you King Compton? King Bill?"

He frowned. "'Bill' will be fine. I have read your blogs and I believe you may know more even than you mention there. Not all of it is believable."

"I know," Arin answered him.

He seemed to expect more from her. She sat wondering what it might be.

"You are an unusual woman, Miss Jorgenson. I do not know what to think of you." He shifted, wiping a bit of invisible, nonexistent lint off of the pant leg of his expensive suit. "Why can you not be glamored?"

"You've read my blog. I'm autistic."

"Isn't the proper word 'asperger syndrome'?" he asked.

She felt a surge of indignation. "No, you're an ass burger."

"Pardon me?" he said, blinking at her.

"No, I don't pardon you. Whoever thought it was more important to 'honor' some ass burger than it was to protect little children from the vicious taunts of other children should be forced to spend their life in the body of a child and suffer those taunts. I will thank you not to call me an ass burger, and not to call any child with autism an ass burger in my presence."

He stared at her. "As you wish. I meant no offense. I had thought that 'asperger' was the more appropriate name for the affliction."

"It's not an affliction for all of us," she told him. "It makes life very, very hard, I won't deny it. But there are benefits. I cannot be glamored, for example."

"What else?" he inquired.

She shrugged. "Most normal humans live unconscious lives. They are better socially because they do not have to know social behavior on any conscious level. They pick up on their environment and they learn when to laugh and when to cry. They learn how to say phrases or words that have a different meaning based on the situation they are in. But they do it all unconsciously.

"We autistics don't learn that. We may laugh at a funeral and cry at a wedding. We say what we mean, and we mean what we say. Normal people so often use phrases that mean something entirely different from what they say that they think nothing of it. They also say things with their words unconsciously, that they do not mean for anyone to know. A normal person will miss the underlying statement, but an autist usually will recognize it.

"I have seen normal people say things directly or even do things directly and deny them vehemently. You will rarely if ever catch an autist doing such things. We live conscious lives. We are aware when we take a jug out of the fridge and set it down. Normals will do it unconsciously and then forget, and ask you why you took the jug out of the fridge thirty seconds after you stood and watched them do it.

"They think that we have no grasp of life because they cannot understand us." She spread the hands that had lain dormant in her lap as she spoke. "But they are disconnected from their subconscious, while we live in ours. That is why life is so hard and overwhelming. Information overload."

He sat staring at her and she stared back.

"You are young, aren't you?" she asked him.

"I am. Young as vampires go, anyway," he replied.

"Yet you are already on the right path." She was surprised. From her studies, it seemed that there were extremely few vampires on the path of light, and nearly all of them were old, very old. "I wonder why it is that you have chosen it so early?"

She walked over and looked him over. Could he be the one? He would not be that powerful, but perhaps...

"No, you are not the one," she recognized the fact out loud. "You are in love, aren't you, Bill?"

"What would make you ask such a question of a vampire?" he asked her.

"Because you are on the right path, and there's a long blond hair on your shoulder."

"What paths are you speaking of?"

"Two vampire paths. Eric is on the other one. Vinciente was also on the other one, far more advanced along it than Eric, though."

"What paths, Miss Jorgenson?"

She shrugged. "Destruction, creation. Life, death. Light, dark. Good, evil. Love, hate. Whatever label you wish to put upon them in order to define and limit them, those are the two paths. Humans have a range of paths available to us. We can change at any time. But vampires grow old and they make a choice at some point. When that choice is made, their lives begin to alter to fit their choice. You may join the AVL at some point. I doubt you willingly kill humans. Eric will probably join the AVL as well, but only because he sees the wind blowing that direction and will seek to seize any advantage it may offer him."

"I find you both fascinating, and rather frightening, Miss Jorgenson." He stood up and knocked on the door. It opened and he turned to her. "You love him, don't you?"

"I do," she answered softly, so softly that she doubted even he heard. He was gone, anyway.

Arin sat back against the wall and sighed. A hand reached in and plucked the chair out through the doorway. She sat staring at her hands and wondered what would become of her and if Eric were alive or dead.

The door opened and there was a series of clicks. Eric walked in, rubbing his wrists and glaring out at those who had pushed him inside.

"Eric!"

"Arin!"

She leaped up and threw herself at him. She was engulfed in cool, hard arms instantly. His hand tangled in her hair as he kissed her, and she found herself lost in a longing both emotional and physical. His fangs clicked out and he jerked away from her.

"Curse you, Bill Compton," he snarled at the camera.

Bereft, she said, "What is it?"

"I was severely wounded last night and I am starving," he answered her. He glared at the camera again. "He didn't have the courage to kill you himself, so he hopes that my hunger will force me to do it."

She stepped over to him. "You and I both know that I have to die, Eric. So does he. I would give my life for yours. Right now, I can think of no better way to die."

He kissed her again, deep and fierce. Then she found herself pressed against the cold wall, his body holding hers captive with a delicious strength. His fangs sank into her neck abruptly, and she was surprised to find that it... well, it hurt like hell.

Then the pain was over and his lips were on her neck and she felt the heat of her own blood as he groaned. Her blood burst from the open wounds, unimpeded, and she felt him nuzzling against her as he drank. A strange lassitude spread through her, and with it came a deep, overwhelming lust. She felt the fire of unbridled sexual hunger roar to life in her belly and settle between her legs.

Eric growled, a primal, vibrant sound that warmed her and increased the lassitude that was growing stronger and stronger. His tongue, heated from the blood flowing over it, caressed her neck and he growled again.

He drew back, panting much like a living human might do. Blood ran down his chin and dripped to his shirt. Arin watched it, so bright and red and living. She could feel her own heartbeat slowing and smiled at him. "I love you," she whispered. Her voice was even more quiet than she thought, and so far, far away.

Darkness closed over his beautiful face as it flew away and vanished down a long tunnel.

Eric, struggling to control his lusts, caught her as she fainted. "If you want her dead, Bill Compton, do it yourself, you coward. I will not be your patsy."

In the office above them, Bill Compton steepled his fingers and pondered the stranger in the holding cell below. Opening the door of his office, he told the guard standing there, "Send them to the woman's home."

The black clad man looked up and objected, "But, Sir-"

Bill lifted him off of the floor. "If I tell you to jump, you don't ask me how high, you better already know. I am your King and if you do not obey me without question or hesitation, I will end you."

He didn't wait for the 'Yes, Sir', but walked back into his office and shut the door.


	24. A Time to Steal

**24. A Time to Steal**

Arin woke to her own bedroom. She felt exhausted and sore. The wounds on her arms ached and she stared down at them. She suddenly became aware of Eric lying beside her. He lay on his back, cold as a corpse, his eyes closed and his chest as still as death.

But he wasn't a puddle, so she knew that he was still alive.

And, oddly, so was she.

She sat in the bed for what must have been hours, watching his still, silent form. She sought to ingrain every plane and curve of his image into her mind. She was as still as he was, her mind going over the strange conversation with the king, the day in a holding cell, and the experiences of the night before.

More than anything, she wanted to free her mind of that moment when the wood pierced his body and she thought that he was lost to her. She sat staring and wanting to cleanse and purge the rage that tried to burn through her, helpless with no outlet now that Vinciente was dead.

She had watched her family die. She preferred death to watching Eric die. How many times could he take such horrific wounds and recover? She hoped she never knew the answer, yet the question ached in her.

Vinciente was dead, but his brother and Progeny, still lived. His vengeance, she was certain, would be brutal. But from her reading, she felt she could tell when each of the brothers were portraying Vinciente.

Vinciente was the insane one. He was brutal and vicious, but his actions were swift and quickly over. Then he would appear to go through times of methodical, calculating vindictiveness. That, she believed, was Vincent.

Yet with all of the information on the internet, getting to the truth was complex and more often than not, impossible to ascertain. She could be wrong, and although it mattered not which brother was which, she knew that one thing did matter... there were two. And the second would be coming. When he did, he would be methodical and cunning.

She reached out and brushed the hair off of Eric's forehead. He didn't stir, and she hadn't expected him to. She wondered idly if he dreamed, and then smiled. She hoped he did, and that they were sweet dreams.

She felt no small amount of anxiety, as well. It was a small thing to tell someone you loved them when you thought you were dying. It was another matter entirely to live with the humiliation of waking up the next day to find that your dying declaration... well... wasn't.

When he woke, what would he think of her? Would he be amused at her sublimely human frailty? Would he seek to take advantage of it? Anxiety and apprehension twisted through her.

Yes, it was one thing to say it when you wouldn't have to face the consequences of it. Another to see your punctured neck and sunken eyes and scraped wrists and hold only any hope of looking something less than a buffoon. A beaten, exhausted buffoon, no less.

No doubt he heard such a thing from a limitless line of vampire groupies. Many of whom were certainly much more beautiful than her, and socially graceful, as well as not such an 'emotional wreck'.

She went out into the kitchen and made herself a smoothie, cutting bits of raw calf liver into it to restore vitamins and minerals. She knew how other people viewed her choice to eat raw meats, but it didn't matter.

She had been in multiple foster homes until her uncle Denny had returned from Europe. He hadn't known until he got back that she was alone. He'd taken her in and her life had changed immediately. She was taken to Tibet with him, where she learned everything from how to milk a yak to how to write the alphabet.

The social workers had informed him that she was low functioning autistic and she would never care for herself or hold a job, and that if he didn't institutionalize her, he was a fool. He told them to go fuck themselves, walked out, and started her on a "paleo diet". She never ate bread again.

It had taken him years to help her overcome not only the severity of autism, but also the severity of the abuse she'd received during her stay in the foster system. He had died five years ago, and she still missed his gentle wisdom and peculiar way of seeing life.

The gifts he'd given her had been myriad, and even if she'd had him the rest of her life, she never could have expressed her gratitude. She wondered what he would think of the predicament she found herself in. What would he think of werewolves and vampires?

She sighed deeply and set the drink down. She fought the longing to go in and sit down again and look at Eric. All day. Finally, she decided that at least she could have a shower. She longed for someone to talk to, but loneliness was such a part of her life that she barely noticed. She stood in the shower and let the water wash away the confusing emotions like it washed away the dirt and crusted blood.

"No sense squatting amongst the chickens when you can be eating the eggs," her uncle would always tell her. It was his way of warning her against trying to be 'normal', when she had abilities and knowledge that others didn't have. She wondered if she was 'squatting amongst the chickens' and pretending to be something she wasn't by being stupid enough to get attached to a vampire, of all things.

But Arin knew things that others didn't. She saw things in ways that others couldn't. And she knew that 'magic' was real, and that it was the only thing that could help against the Ancients. Not only that, but she knew that Vincent and Vinciente were only the beginning.

Vinciente wanted Eric's power base in Area 5. But he was a pawn in a larger game, and Vincent would be next to seek out Eric. Ostensibly, it would be for vengeance—and no doubt, he would want it, and badly. But he was being manipulated as much as everyone else.

The net was tightening on the whole world. The Ancients needed undocumented vampires to tear whole areas apart. They needed the chaos.

"From chaos, bring order." It was an ancient saying attributed to the Illuminati. But the Illuminati were pawns as well.

When undocumented vampires began running rampant, the call would go out by humans and vampires alike for tighter controls and for a stricter policy governing vampires. Already the noose was tight around the necks of humans. One couldn't buy or sell without requisite identification for the most part, and it was only getting stricter.

Soon, if the Ancients got their way, they would have managed the same noose for vampires. No doubt, they were using werewolves for the same ultimate purpose... tag them, identify them... and then you control them.

But people were blind to the greater danger imposed by this system of tagging and binding. It would seem that the vampires were, as well. George Orwell had been ahead of his time.

Arin knew, though. There was a way to defeat them, but it involved magic.

She couldn't resist the urging anymore. She walked back into the bedroom and stood looking at Eric.

Her plan would only work once and she was uncertain how many Ancients there were. But one of them could be defeated, which would push their plans back significantly. It would buy time for someone else to find out how to defeat one or more of the others.

Yet Arin also understood something fundamental, and despaired. She could not bring herself to try with anyone else except Eric. The ritual would bind her irrevocably to the vampire whose soul she stole. And she no longer had choices. She would be bound to none other than him, no matter the price.

She knelt beside the bed and took his hand in hers. Holding it against her cheek, she wept for what she was going to do, and the man she was going to do it to. He was not the one. He had chosen darkness.

She would do it anyway, and damn herself forever.


	25. Lost Soul

**25. Lost Soul**

Eric was used to it now; waking up to a sea of often conflicting, always overwhelming emotion. He smiled and stretched. Alcide had obeyed his instructions, Eric recognized immediately. She was awash in joy, muted by a strange, evocative sorrow.

He could only guess the origin of her sorrow, but the source of the joy had to be his gift. He entered the living room to find her lying on her back, a puppy curled up on her chest, sleeping. Now, he would not have to hear werewolves complain about being threatened with "smoochie, smoochie" anymore.

He had doubted that, now that she knew they were people, she would continue to be so carefree and playful around them, anyway. So really, he hadn't needed to get her a puppy to curb the baby talk. More honestly, it was his unspoken promise to her that she would not die at his hands. Somehow, he knew she would recognize that he would not give her a living animal to care for, and then kill her.

He watched her sleep, amazed that she felt the pervasive joy even then, rather than the usual calm serenity he felt from her.

There was a knock at the front door and it opened. Eric zipped over to disarm the alarm before it could blare and wake Arin. Then he stood staring at Bill Compton for a moment. "My Liege," he drawled, bowing a minimal, scant bow.

"Walk with me," Bill commanded.

Eric raised an eyebrow, but walked out the door, closing it softly behind him. The King's men surrounded the house, guns close at hand.

"I have spoken to The Authority about your human," Bill started without preamble. "She may live, Eric, but there are conditions. You must make her yours. If she will not be yours... or mine... she must die."

"She will never be yours!"

"So she is yours?"

Eric hesitated. "No."

"Then she must die, Eric."

"I will ask her again tonight. Perhaps if she knows the stakes, she will change her mind."

Bill stopped walking and turned to look at Eric. "She must have my blood, as well."

"That is not wise," Eric argued. "It may seem an advantage for you to be able to find her. But her emotions are the strongest I have ever felt. No offense, Bill, but you are not the most..." Eric searched for a word, "stable... of vampires to begin with. I fear that the depth of her emotion would be costly to you, and we will have to kill her anyway. Such depth of feeling, even not your own, could cause even greater instability in you. We cannot afford to have a king who is subject to sudden, unexpected bouts of amusement, furious rages, or gut-tearing waves of sorrow."

"The Authority has commanded it," Bill stated, looking at Eric as if he had lost his mind.

"Then I suggest you lie," Eric replied pragmatically. "You will not be able to handle her emotional outbursts. She lies asleep, and still her emotions are more powerful than the average human, and they are nowhere near their normal capacity. She makes Sookie seem placid, even unemotional."

Bill's eyebrows rose. "That seems... exaggerated."

"I assure you, I am understating the situation, if anything. She experienced such rage during my fight with Vinciente that he lost control over himself, and he is hundreds of years older than you." Eric stopped and looked out at the woods. "She is dangerous even for me, Bill."

"Then why do you not kill her?" Bill asked.

"I love her. She almost makes me believe that we vampires really do have souls. Though if I have one, I found it the night I found her. She makes me want to take a different path."

The King was silent for long moments, staring at him. "If you cannot convince her to be yours, Eric, it is out of my hands."

Bill walked to his car and got in. In a moment, he and his guards were bumping down the driveway away from Arin's house.

Eric walked inside and sat in the chair beside the sofa, listening to the patterns of her sleep. With no change at all to the rhythm, he found her blue eyes open and looking at him.

"Arin," he said, suddenly uncertain.

She stood up and turned, placing the puppy on the sofa. Eric chafed. He could feel little from her. He hated it when she did that—burying and hiding the feelings that told him so much that she would never say or express in any other way.

She stepped up to him, inches away from him, and the smile on her face was a glimpse of divinity. She pulled his face down to hers and he kissed her with all of the ferocious longing burning inside him.

But she pulled away, and he groaned, his fangs snapping out. "Please don't turn me away," he told her.

She smiled and took his face in both of her hands. "Take me to the beach, Eric."

"Not tonight. Please, I need-"

"Now, Eric. Take me to the beach now. I want to make love to you under the full moon, in the water."

What man—what vampire—could refuse?

A couple of minutes later he held her as she coughed and gasped, staggering. Finally, her heartbeat slowed and she melted against him. He kissed her again, and she didn't stop him. He tore at her clothes, needing to feel the heat of her skin against his, to hear the thunder of her heartbeat.

"Arin, I feel more alive since I met you than I felt when I was alive," he breathed. "I want to change," he whispered to her. "Show me the right path, and I will follow it and never leave it."

He felt her sorrow. It pained him and he felt blood gathering in his eyes.

"You must find it for yourself, Eric. I'm sorry."

"I will find it for you," he promised her.

Infinite sorrow. Indescribable lust. Regret. Longing. She felt it, so he felt it.

"Tonight," she whispered to him, "I will give you the only thing I have to give that is truly mine. But there is a price."

"There is nothing you could ask of me, that I am not willing to give."

Misery. Regret. Hope. Love. She felt it, so he felt it.

"What I ask is no small thing," she whispered. "All I ask is your soul."

He pulled his head back and looked at her, the moon gilting her features with a soft, delicate glow.

"If I had a soul at all, Arin, I would give it to you freely. It would have always been yours, anyway."

A breeze whirled around them. Sorrow and regret shot through her. The sound of dolphins came from offshore in the water. The trees whispered and gasped in the wind and bore witness. The moon stared, a silent sentinel overhead.

Then Eric forgot everything except her body against his. She tore at his clothes now, lust and love flowing through her so profoundly that Eric could not contain it and he smiled as he lifted her up and carried her into the water.

With the ocean all around them, he ran his hands across her body, feeling the tone of her muscles, the softness of her breasts, her heat and her pleasure. Touching her was like no other experience in his life, because he shared her feelings along with his own. Such depth should not have been possible, and yet he felt it with her.

The waves rose and fell around them, the beat of her heart thundering in his ears. Despite the deep longing and lust that he felt and the sensual, sexual nature of their mating, his fangs did not come out. She wrapped her legs around him and he thrust inside her, burying himself in heat and life and sweetness.

Her pain was swift, dissipating as he moved inside her body. A wave crested and broke around them, spraying them with warm ocean water. Her body flowed against his, slick and sleek and wet.

He thrust into her again and again, savoring her with every stroke into the tight confines of her body. Her lust sang through him, drowning out the roar of the surf and the breezy chatter of the trees in the wind. Her longing, her pleasure, her love thundered above the siren song of her heartbeat.

Eric felt full, complete, resplendent, and he did not know if it was his own feeling or hers.

Part of him made love to her there on that beach. Part of him felt oneness with her, even with the water and the moon and the gasping trees.

Another part of him rose up, as well, though. This part of him fucked her furiously. The beast in him rose and claimed her, possessing her, marking her as his own. It reveled in her cries of ecstasy as he drove into her, taking and claiming her.

But his fangs did not come out. The beast was subsumed by the new part of him until, united within himself, however briefly, he cried out with her under the silent moon, emptying himself into her.

He felt the pleasure of orgasm well up inside him, exquisite and sweet and intense.

...But then the world went insane. He felt himself ripping, tearing. A maelstrom of water and wind surged around him. The moon seemed to twist and whirl. The trees chattered and laughed, obscenely wicked.

Then the beast rose in him again, unimpeded. It sensed her hot, naked body and struck. His fangs tore her neck open and he drank without remorse... until something else... something him and yet not-him... surged forward and cried out.

His heart was breaking, but he did not know why.

Barely, he obeyed its wishes and he licked the wound closed. Tossing the body aside, he flew away, back to Fangtasia, where he greeted Pam negligently, took the first girl he could find, and dragged her to the basement. He fucked her and drank from her, but she could not slake the unfamiliar longing burning in him like rampant fire.

He discarded her, dragging another to this office and doing it over again. Only his methodical mind kept him from killing them in his dissatisfaction.

By the time dawn whispered around his senses, he had fucked and sucked six women and found nothing of what he craved.


	26. To Be a Vampire

**26. To Be A Vampire**

The next morning, Arin called Alcide. He came and got her, and drove her back to Bon Temps. He didn't ask how she got stranded at Eric's beach house, and she didn't volunteer an answer. When he dropped her off, asking if she wanted him to stay, she shook her head and thanked him.

Inside, she cleaned up after the puppy and fed him, regretting her lapse in caring for him. After taking him for a walk and playing with him, she left him sleeping contentedly and went into town. There, she paid off the rest of her loan, though she could ill afford to do it. It took her savings account down to ten dollars and fifteen cents, and left her less than eighty dollars in her checking. She moved fifty to her savings and went home. Eric could no longer come and go in her house as he pleased.

She scurried home as quickly as she could. The sun, though it brought her no real physical pain, hurt her on a more fundamental level. She retreated to her bedroom and had to force herself to carry out the normal functions of caring for her animals and eating food.

The weight of a thousand year old vampire soul was already taking its toll on her.

There was, though, an advantage. She found that her emotions were controlled almost automatically by the vampire soul. It was calculating, methodical, keen. It did not tolerate the exuberance or instability of her human soul.

She understood even better now why so few vampires took the path of light.

His soul was heavy, old, and far more powerful than her own. Her thoughts often turned dark through the day, she nearly gutted poor Betty simply to see what would happen.

It was only a matter of time before Arin lost her self, consumed by the power of an ancient, evil soul. A soul that had chosen the dark path, and a soul that she had stolen. She could only hope to survive its influence long enough to kill the Ancient and be free of it.

She held onto the belief that no price was too high to pay to save the souls of countless humans and vampires from the Soul Eaters. The ancient soul within her whispered to her, seducing her, eroding her faith.

She was so entranced by its lurid, grotesque images that when the knock came on the door that evening, she almost forgot what it meant. It took all of her strength to open the door. Bill Compton stood on her porch, hands in his pants pockets.

"May I come in?" he asked her.

Eric's soul calculated, considered. She ignored it through an act of outright will alone. "Please do come in, Bill," she answered.

"What did you do to Eric?" he asked without preamble. "He has returned to his old self."

"I cannot tell you," she answered.

"Are you His human?" the King asked.

Calmly, quietly, "I am not."

Bill's lips pursed. "We have a problem, then, Miss Jorgenson. The Authority has agreed to let you live, based only upon the condition that you be His... or Mine. Now, I cannot make him take you as His."

Eric's soul calculated again. It sought advantages, certainties, ways to maneuver more power. Arin knew that she had no other choice. She had to live. She had a debt to pay. "Very well."

"You will be Mine, then?" Bill asked her.

"Yes. If my life depends on it, then I will be Yours."

Bill nodded. "I will be going now. I will check in on you from time to time. I suggest that you not update your blog for a while."

A 'suggestion' from the King was... not so much a suggestion at all. Arin did not miss that fact. She nodded once, a wry half-smile on her face.

"You remind me of someone else," he told her.

"The woman you love?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied, also giving her a half formed, sad smile. "Good night, Miss Jorgenson."

He was gone then, leaving the door open, only the screen banging shut behind him.

Hours passed and Arin sat struggling with the demonic force inside her. A pervasive evil that hungered and howled. It was worse than she imagined, as she remembered things she had done, had enjoyed, had hungered for—things she had never done or enjoyed or hungered for before.

"Arin," a soft voice called from the porch.

She looked up, panic flooding through her, instantly squelched by the elder soul she carried.

Eric stood outside the screen door. "Let me in, Arin."

She stared at him.

"Arin," he demanded, "let me in. I am hungry." His fangs were out, and he licked his lips obscenely. "Invite me in, and I will fuck you until dawn. You won't even want to walk after I am done with you, which is good, because you won't be able to."

She looked away.

He flitted to the side window, closer to her now. "Arin..." his voice was wheedling, sly. "I have a hunger, Arin. A hunger only you can feed. An itch only you can scratch."

He flitted to the other window on the other side of the door. "I want you, Arin." Back to the door. "I need you." He banged on the sides of the door. "Let me in!" he roared.

He picked up the chair on her porch and threw it with such strength that it flew all the way across the lawn and shattered against a tree.

"Let me in, bitch! You owe me!"

She closed her eyes and felt, distantly, the misery of her own soul as it ached for him. The vampire soul laughed, amused at her sorrow and pain.

Abruptly, he left, and she found that she could barely breathe. Tears ran down her face and she curled up, the puppy licking her tears.

The next day, Alcide, at her request, took the puppy back.

She had begun to consider tearing it apart. She knew that it was the vampire soul within her, but did not know how much longer she could refuse it. She scurried about to care for her animals that morning, desperate to be away from the consuming, terrifying brightness of the sun.

He came again that night, and she laughed at him. She cried again when he left, but there was no puppy to lick away her tears.

On the fourth night, Vincent came to her house. He knocked on her door and tried to glamor her. When it failed, he left in a fury. Arin's vampire soul chided her for her weak and puny body. Useless, meaningless.

She called Bill and asked him to come to see her. When he did, she told him of Vincent's visit. He left. Several hours later, her house was surrounded by men in black, unmarked clothes. Her vampire nature despised them, weak and pathetic, no match for it... if only it were not saddled with a weak human body.

She ignored it. It raged.

Morning came and the cow kicked her. She killed it and drank its blood instead of its milk. It was warm and satisfying. And so sweet.

That night, Eric came again. She stood at the screen door and stared at him. Part of her wanted to dominate him, to take him over, to own him. Part of her wanted to cry and beg his forgiveness. She couldn't remember which part was her.

He stared back at her, as if he could hear the battle inside of her.

The next night, he came again. He stared at her, and she at him. She looked up at him, devious thoughts twisting through her mind. She grinned, a feral, hateful grin. How she wanted fangs to rip his throat out with! A growl rolled from her lips and it felt right, it felt natural and she hated him because she could not destroy him with this weak, pathetic body.

That morning she ate a chicken alive, laughing and dancing with its body dangling from her hand when it finally died.

Vincent came to her that night, and she found that she hated him, too. He stood, unnoticed by the men in the yard, and she almost walked out to meet him. He was dark and beautiful and seductive and she could feel the kindred soul inside him.

A dark soul like her own.

But that other part of her, that annoying gnat that would not let her be, made her stop. So she stood hungering for that darkness in him.

And then Eric came and there was gunfire and Arin laughed as men shot each other in the crossfire. They danced and died and their blood smelled like wheat bread, which she had once craved in her mother's kitchen. She stood smelling the coppery scent of death. Giggles rose in her throat and she found herself laughing at the pleasure of death all around her.

The wind shifted and the scent of carrion came from the barn, disgusting her. She slunk to the sofa, lying back against it. An old habit from her youth had returned, and she sat tapping the tip of each finger in turn against her thumb, rocking back and forth. Tap of the index finger, "One." Tap, tap of the middle finger, "Two, two." Three taps of the ring finger, four of the pinkie. "One, two, three, four," and begin again.

The habit helped her hold on to her failing humanity by narrowing her focus, as it had once helped her to retain her sanity by quieting the screaming of her emotions.

A sound outside the door made her look up. She walked over and looked out. A dark shadow moved around the lawn, killing men as guns blazed and men shouted. Jealousy roared through her. She stepped out to watch.

When he was done, the vampire saw her and flitted over to stand in front of her. He was shrouded in darkness and his fangs dripped with blood. She could see nothing of him except the blood, glittering in the moonlight, and the vague outline of his body.

"Well, well, well," he said, staring at her. "What are you? You smell human, but... you do not feel human."

"I'm a vampire!" she objected. "I am just stuck in this miserable excuse for a body." The soul inside of her calculated again. Measured the vampire before her. "You could Make me. I would be reborn in your image."

He stood staring at her. "You must prove yourself first. Come."

She followed him. He stopped at the end of her driveway.

Eric and Vincent were struggling together. Even as she watched, Eric was thrown against a large tree. The tree snapped and toppled, its root system freed from the ground and standing in the air while the branches now lay on the earth.

"Which one do I kill?" she asked.

He laughed, a derisive, spiteful laugh. "If you can kill either of them, I promise you that I will Turn you." He lifted away from her toward the sky. "There's silver in that van. You'll need it if you intend to try."

He flew away and she was left standing by herself. She bared her teeth in a feral grin. She could almost feel her fangs already.


	27. Unendurable Hunger

**27. Unendurable Hunger**

* * *

><p><em>Thank you, Maladdict! I was just thinking that I hoped that if I was doing something wrong, someone would mention it. It's like you read my mind! :)<em>

_Of course, it's all in the mind of the reader, I suppose..._**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Eric had worked to slake the demands of his body for the first few days. But it hadn't been long before he realized that the hunger of his body would never be sated. No amount of women or blood could cure the hunger he felt.<p>

At first, he had thought it was because Arin was the source of it, but then he had realized... she was the root of it, but not the source of it. She was the only thing that could soothe him, but not if he consumed her.

As the days had passed, he had also begun to be aware that the feelings he was used to were no longer his own. He no longer fought the blackness of his vampire nature, instead, for a reason he could not understand or guess at, that familiar presence was haunting Arin—and she was losing the fight.

He felt her self-loathing, crippling in its intensity. He felt her hunger, and realized that, like his physical hunger, hers could never be slaked, either. She did not have the vampire body to slake the hunger of that dark presence within her. He did not have the darkness within him to feed the hunger of his vampire body.

When he felt her lust, he had responded before realizing it. He'd been at her house and realized that she was responding to Vincent before he even knew that he'd intended to check on her.

Now he lay on a tree, trying to catch his breath. _Vampires do not breathe!_ The thought struck him an instant before Vincent did. He rolled away and jumped to his feet, no longer trying to catch breath that he didn't need.

It was as if he was losing his vampiric qualities, an idea ludicrous at its best. Yet as he ducked back again, he was once more too slow. Vincent's fist caught him and sent him into another tree.

"You are pathetic, insect. You're three hundred years older than me, but you fight like you are a newborn."

Eric couldn't take much more of it. He was failing as he could never remember failing before. He scrambled behind the tree, and Vincent snarled.

"You fucking coward. Face me!"

"How did you find her?" Eric asked, trying to buy himself time to think of a strategy.

Vincent chuckled, a dark, ugly sound. "My brother and I have a quality that must be unique to twin vampires. When a human has had my blood, he could feel them. Any bond formed for one of us, was formed for both. It made it rather confusing as to which of us was the Maker, and which the Progeny. Sometimes we don't even remember."

He grabbed Eric's arm and slammed his face into the tree, then threw him again. "She was quite the mewling little human until a few days ago. I don't know what happened to her, but I like it. I like it a lot. I think I'll even Turn her."

He dragged Eric to a kneeling position and slammed his fist into his face. "Did you feel her tonight? She wanted to fuck me. She wanted to fuck me so bad that I could smell her from the other end of the driveway still."

His fist drove into Eric's face again, then he used his knee to hit him in the face, too. He laughed as Eric slumped. He was obviously just getting started, though, because he dragged Eric up again, his fist coming back to hammer into him again, tearing his shirt off of his body.

So the next time, he grabbed Eric by the hair.

Before the blow landed, though, there was a hiss of Silvered skin. With a snarl, he turned on his attacker. Silver slapped against his face and around his neck. He grabbed it with his other hand, letting Eric drop the ground as he let go of his hair.

Arin jerked on the silver, laughing maniacally. Eric stared through a haze of blood at the woman in front of him, unrecognizable. Her eyes were bright, two glittering shards of madness. Another chain of silver landed on Vincent, lashing Eric on its way past. He scrambled backward, away from the deadly, painful bite.

She jerked once more, and Vincent fell. She leaped on him, scrambling to tie his feet together. Ignoring Eric entirely, she secured her prize. With a stake, he watched in stunned horror as she staked his hand down, howling with insane glee when he cried out.

She stalked around him, bent over and cackling like the worst vision of delusion imaginable. Then, Eric's stomach turned as he felt her grotesque pleasure, a rising hunger... she dropped to the ground beside Vincent and began to jerk and pull at his flesh with her teeth.

When his skin failed to rip, she grabbed a silver stake and dug at him. Blood flowed and she laughed. "Pretty," she muttered, guzzling it with sick slurping sounds. Eric backed further away, disturbed by the sight.

She looked up at him, her chin covered in blood. She held up a chunk of flesh toward him. He shook his head and she shoved it in her mouth, tearing at it.

Vincent's cries and pleas actually wrenched at Eric, tearing into the fabric of the man he had become. Arin's complete lack of notice terrified him on a deep level.

The moon, scant and distant, threw the macabre scene into focus too clear for Eric. Arin, her dark hair matted with blood, squatted, muttering, over Vincent. Blood flowed from the vampire, yet she seemed discontent, picking at him with the silver spike as if to find choice bits or a faster flow.

Eric realized that he should stop her, but he feared the silver and the stake in her hand. He wondered if she would turn on him if he tried to take her away from her morbid meal.

The problem was taken from his hands, though. Bill flitted up and stopped. He stood over Vincent, ignoring Arin entirely.

"For an attack upon my soveriegnty, for your attack upon another vampire, for your crime of vampire-on-human violence, I sentence you to the True Death," Bill told Vincent. His gloved hand, holding a silver stake, descended. Vincent exploded into bloody sludge.

"No!" Arin cried. "No! No, no no!" She picked up the sludge, sniffing at it and dropping it to scrabble through it and sniff more.

"Shhh," Bill said to her. He took the stake from her hand and dropped it. "There, there."

She collapsed against him, sobbing. "So hungry!"

He patted her on the head. "It's okay. Let me get you back home. Rest and you will feel better."

"Where did he go? He promised to Make me if I killed one of them. I just wanted a little taste first. Do you think he will still Make me even though you killed him instead of me?"

Bill picked her up and flitted to her house with her.

Eric slowly got up, every part of his body aching.

"Did you promise to Turn her?" Bill demanded.

"No!" Eric objected. "I love her. I could never Turn her."

"She is acting like a newborn vampire," Bill responded. "But she is not one. It does not make sense."

"You went in her house," Eric accused.

"Yes. She is Mine," Bill told him.

A furious jealousy blazed through Eric with a force he couldn't contend with. He jumped on Bill before he could control himself.

He found his arm immediately wrapped in silver. He used his other arm and found that one wrapped in silver. He rolled over, furious still.

"You neglected to make her yours," Bill told him. "I told you that it was you or me... or death."

Blood welled in Eric's eyes.

"Sort her out, Eric. She can not go around attacking vampires and eating them."

"She won't let me in," Eric told him.

"Figure something out, Eric. This can not continue, or she must meet the True Death." He picked up the silver chains. "And figure out who offered to Turn her."

Then he was gone and Eric was left alone with his confusion and his grief.


	28. Lunatic

**28. Lunatic**

The next night, all evidence of the deaths was gone from Arin's lawn. It sat quiet and still in the darkness, shrouded by the few trees near it and loomed in the darkness, somehow menacing.

Eric crossed the lawn and stood at her door. She was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa, tapping her fingers and muttering to herself over and over again. Unexpectedly, she looked up, right at him.

She got up, still tapping and muttering and sank down beside the door, still tapping the fingers of her right hand in order against her thumb as she sat on her heels.

She put her left hand against the screen, leaning against it.

"Eric...one... I can't control it anymore... two, two...Can't... three, three..." then she stopped, her eyes focused inward. Her head twitched. "Start over." Twitch. "Start over. One, two, three... I think it's killing me... four." With each number, a tap of a different fingertip to the thumb tip.

It unnerved him and he stepped back.

"No, wait, wait." Her head jerked, her eyes unfocused. "Start over. When he comes, have to explain. Four steps, easy to remember. One." Her other hand clutched at the screen as she muttered again, counting and flicking.

"Eric, I'm sorry. One. That was one... Start over."

He shook his head. She was falling apart right before his very eyes.

"One, two, three, four. One. Finished one. Two. Two. One: apologize. Two: explain. One, two, three, four. Two: I stole your soul, Eric. Two." Still with the tapping as she talked.

Shock flickered through him. "What? You did what?" Denial rose in him. He was a vampire, he had no soul.

"One, two, three, four. One. Two. Two. Finished two: explain. Three, three, three. Three: elaborate. Elaborate, three: He'll come for you... One, two, three, four... When he comes for you, it won't be there. He can't take what isn't there."

Then, she started hitting her head with her left hand, "No. No, no, no. Not finished. Didn't finish four!"

A switch came over her and she practically purred, rubbing against the screen door and looking at him with unbridled, perverse lust. "He'll come for you, Eric. But I'll have your soul." Her smile was devious, evil, malicious.

"Tasty soul, Eric. I took it." She laughed, a low, cruel laugh.

"No," he denied it.

She curled against the screen and rubbed on it like a cat. "Oh yes. I took it. It was easy." She looked sly, feline, ferine. She dropped to all fours, "You practically threw it at me. You didn't value it. Didn't even want it."

She rose back up until she was on her knees a few inches from the door. Running her hands across her body in a lewd, degrading manner, she smirked at him. "All of this power, Eric. All mine now." Her voice left mocking behind to become openly disgusted and derisive. "Wasteful, Eric." She shook her finger at him. "Very, very wasteful."

Her head twitched again, and her eyes unfocused. He stepped back again; it as almost as if he was watching two wholly different people—neither sane.

She counted. "Start over. One, two, three, four," tap, tap, tap, tap.

Another jerk of the head, "No, no, no!"

A low laugh that made him step back yet again. "She's trying to warn you, Eric. Step four, warn him." She laughed. She twined sinuously up the screen door and back down. "No warning, Eric. It's my soul now, and I'm not giving it back." Laughter, maniacal yet lyrical.

"No!" another switch. "If he turns me, Eric, I won't be like a new vampire. I will be as strong as you." Lucidity, sweet and warm and earnest.

"No. Not possible." The other one was back, derisive and repugnant. "Insanity. Quite insane. Only old vampires are powerful, not new ones."

He turned away, unable to face the lightning fast changes and the strangeness of it all. He flitted toward Fangtasia, her mocking scream echoing in his ears, "Yes, run away, Eric. Run away! And don't come back!"


	29. Failure

**29. Failure**

Two nights later, the vampire soul was convinced that it had wholly consumed and overcome the other part. The soul that originally inhabited the body, so far as it could tell, was quiescent, still. When prodded, it found only a silken surface, like an undisturbed lake. The prodding of the vampire soul created not even a ripple there, and so it dismissed the original soul as perhaps dead, maybe gone, but regardless; forgettable.

The body had begun to respond, and Eric's soul considered the possibility that it might not even need a Maker. The virulent, noxious presence itself was working on the body, altering it, forming it. It was able to flit into the barn and capture a chicken. No human had any such ability.

The soul experienced pleasure and triumph. The body, like the soul, was subjugated. It would bend to the will of the greater essence and with time, would become as unstoppable as the last body. The one that had lived so long that the vampire soul had so completely overcome the original soul that not a scrap of it could be found to separate away.

And from its own perspective, it had escaped none too soon, for the vampire had grown soft. He had begun to let the feelings of the human alter him. He had altered from the trajectory. An unforgivable sin in the methodical thinking of the vampire soul.

It drove the body to suck on the chicken as its life drained out, but the vampiric soul remained unquenched, unsatisfied.

"You have certainly changed," a voice said.

Arin's body turned and the vampire soul stared out through her eyes. "No. I am what I have always been and should always be. You promised to Make me."

"You did not technically kill that vampire," replied the Ancient.

"Turn me. Teach me how to eat souls," Eric's soul replied, the words falling from Arin's lips like the drip of a leaking faucet.

The fingers released and the chicken fell. It was the last one.

A chuckle. "That can not be taught. You must earn it, fledgeling."

"Turn me, and I will."

"So needy," replied the Ancient. "Why should I turn you?"

The vampire soul wanted to say that it was a vampire already. It wanted to tell him that it had stolen a soul, an ancient and powerful one, at that. Instead, it stood and tapped the fingers of one hand against its thumb and could think of nothing, as if everything had gone blank, like a placid lake or a still day.

"You will not Turn her," Eric's voice came from behind the Ancient.

"Well, well, well," the Ancient said, turning to Eric and dropping the hood of his cloak. He looked young, his face serene. Around his eyes were tattoos that must have been there before he was Made, making him look as if he wore heavy black kohl around his eyes.

"Who are you?" Eric asked.

"You may call me Anekharup, if you like," the Ancient responded. He pronounced it 'ah-neck-air-oop'.

"You are undocumented," Eric noted.

"I have been undocumented for thousands of years before you even existed."

"Arin was right," Eric said.

The vampire soul noticed a ripple. Only a ripple... on the surface of the ice-smooth lake of the dead soul. It subsided, and the vampire soul returned to the conversation.

"It matters little. No one will believe her. Human minds are easy to control. Vampires... I grant, they are harder. Vinciente's foolishness in trying to kill her was most unexpected and uninvited. It was nice of you to do the dirty work in killing him for us. And I thank you, as well, for keeping her alive."

Eric looked surprised.

Anekharup chuckled. "Do you not understand? Death would have given her validity. No one listens to the living."

"You do not drink blood?" Eric asked it as if he didn't believe it.

The vampire soul in Arin smiled. Eric was a fool.

"I no longer have need of blood," Anekharup replied. "Enough chatter," he said then. "You really don't need to know any of this anymore." He turned to Arin and his fangs clicked out.

Unexpectedly, out of nowhere, the vampire soul found Arin's voice stating, "You are vulnerable while you feed. Don't you think that you should start with the thousand year old vampire, not the mere human?"

His hand darted out and Arin was lifted off of the ground. "How do you know that?"

The vampire soul had to subside. It did not know the answer and could not think quickly enough to come up with one, but it hissed and snarled as the puny Arin soul responded. "I watched while you killed my parents. You made the same mistake everyone always does. You thought that since I was autistic, I couldn't hear, wouldn't speak, and did not have the wits to understand you."

"Ah, I remember you." He twisted her head to look her over. "Quite a change, I must say." Then he pondered for a moment. "No, I definitely think that you are the more dangerous one. Anyone who could fool me when she was just a child is not someone I am willing to let live. I will never make that mistake again."

He opened his mouth, and the vampire soul lost control and panicked. It fought for control, believing in its arrogance that it could defeat even this ancient being. As Anekharup began to suck in a breath, blue tendrils of light stretched out from Arin's body and she went rigid.

Eric didn't waste the opportunity that Arin's words had afforded him. When Anekharup began to feed, Eric flitted forward... only to find his neck grasped by the older, more powerful vampire, who stopped feeding long enough to turn and murmur to him, "So predictable."

He now held one body in each hand. Eric fought to reach him anyway, and he laughed.

During Eric's distraction, though, his soul also seized the opportunity. Nothing was working out as Arin had hoped. The Ancient was supposed to feed on Eric first, and she was to grasp the chance to kill him. Because Eric's soul was in her, he would not lose it because she could give it back after Anekharup was dead.

But Eric's vampiric soul did not care. It didn't believe that Arin could pull it off, and so it fought for dominance. On the mortal plane, but an instant passed. On the level of souls, though, a titanic battle raged. The vampire soul believed it fought for its life.

Arin knew she fought for its life. If the vampire soul was in control when Anekharup fed, Eric would die. So she fought the ancient soul with the whole of her being. She fought with the strength of her love. She fought with the iron will that she had gained through fighting emotions too deep and too powerful to live with without it.

She fought. She struggled. She strove.

She lost.


	30. A Time to Forgive

**30. A Time to Forgive**

Arin shrieked in the confines of her mind, silenced by the gibbering vampiric soul. It begged, pleaded, and tried to use Arin's body in ways it would not have worked for a thousand years—had it been turned and lived that long.

To no avail. Anekharup sucked in another breath, drawing the ancient, screaming soul with it. Black slipped from Arin's body, a darkness so thick and complete that it seemed to draw the very heat from the air around it.

Anekharup laughed, a smooth, shimmering sound, strangely erotic and evocative.

He dropped Arin's body and turned to Eric. "That," he said, "was most unexpected. And delicious. So very, very delicious." A shiver ran the length of his body. "That was no human soul. That was an ancient soul. An evil soul. That was your soul."

He grasped Eric with both hands. "I wonder what I will find inside of you."

He took a deep breath. Nothing happened for a long moment.

He breathed out and tried again.

Behind him, Tracy changed form and gripped the silver stake she had stolen from the van two nights before. Changing form, she caught it as it fell from her lupine mouth, turning it. She plunged it into Anekharup's back.

Dropping Eric, Anekharup whirled and shoved his arm through Tracy's chest.

The werewolf staggered backward, her eyes wide and filled with pain.

Anekharup exploded, falling to the ground in sloppy sludge.

Tracy dropped to her knees and fell face-first into his remains.

Eric stood, covered in Anekharup' gore. His bloody tears mingled with the splash on his face and he stood silent and weary.

"No," Arin said. "Oh, god, no. No. Please." She pulled Tracy into her lap and begged her to be alive. "No. No, oh please. Please, don't be dead!"

Eric felt her misery, her denial. He felt it as if it were his own, and he fell to his knees beside her. But he also felt betrayed. He felt rage.

He cried for the lost dream. For the lost hope. For the broken promise of love. Arin had betrayed him and stolen his soul and let it be taken. Lost forever.

'Forgiveness is love. Love is everything.' The trees whispered it. The world cried it. The sky wrote it in the stars.

Eric fought it. He was a vampire, he could not love.

But he did. He did love. He loved Arin.

He chose then. He turned onto the brighter path. His soul was gone, but it didn't matter. He would choose while he still could.

He picked Arin up, inconsolable in her grief and loss. Overwhelmed with a terrible guilt. He held her and he realized that the events had broken something inside her. She was diminished in some way that he didn't understand.

And he... he knew he would die without his soul. He knew it and he didn't care. He would take Arin to the beach and he would hold her until the morning. Then, he would greet the sun and go to his Maker.

She had given him his soul that night they met. She had only taken back what was hers to begin with, and her intent in doing it had been noble and sincere.

He would do something that he hadn't done in a thousand years.

He would forgive.

He called Bill and give him a short, terse explanation, but no more. Then he dropped the phone in Anekharup's remains and flitted to the beach house. Arin was too distraught this time to notice. Eric walked them into the water. She spluttered and cried as he undressed her.

"I'm sorry, Eric. I'm so sorry. So sorry." She said it over and over again.

He ignored her and cleaned them both. He carried her back up out of the water, flitted inside for a blanket, and laid her down on it. Gathering her close, he held her until her tears turned to slumber.

Then he closed his eyes and listened to the music that was uniquely Arin. He smelled her smells and he held her and he wept until he, too, slept.


	31. Oh, the Humanity

**31. Oh, the Humanity**

Eric heard bird song. It irritated him. He was hot and uncomfortable and the birds wouldn't let him go back to sleep.

He sat up and panicked, a programmed response.

No, he wouldn't run. He drew a deep breath, and it felt refreshing. He would greet the sun the way his Maker had, with courage and acceptance. He opened his eyes.

The sun glittered on the water, and Eric lifted his hands to stare at them.

"What? How?" it was all he could think to say.

"It's my fault," Arin said from beside him. Her voice was choked by a sob. He felt her sorrow and regret and self-loathing. "I've killed you."

"I feel fine," Eric said. "Better than fine. I'm looking at the sunrise! And I'm alive!"

"You have five or ten years left, Eric. Maybe, if we're lucky, fifteen if we stay close to each other."

"What are you talking about?"

Tears ran down her face, and she struggled for long moments before she spoke. "When I took your soul, Eric, I gave you half of mine. You can't live with nothing. I thought the Ancient would take that half, and I could kill him while he was taking it. Then I could give you back your own soul. But it's gone, and I cannot give you the rest of mine, because I would die before the transfer was complete."

She gasped for breath, clearly overcome with regret, and shook her head when he prepared to speak. "Neither of us can live long with half a soul."

"I have a soul?" Eric couldn't believe it. "But why am I sitting in the sun?"

She looked at him, and he felt her sorrow; heavy, thick, morose. "Don't you understand, Eric? That's why you'll die. It's only a human soul. That's all I had to give you."

Eric stood up. A joy more profound than anything he'd felt in a thousand years blew through him like the winds of fate. Kneeling in front of her, he said. "You have given me five to fifteen years of walking in the sunlight with you. You've given me humanity and taught me how to love.

"Arin," he said, tilting her face up to his. "You've given me everything."

He kissed her and made love to her with the heat of the sun kissing his skin.

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><p><em><strong>AN:** And so ends my first attempt at True Blood fanfic. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading, and my sincerest gratitude to those who reviewed._

_I have decided to post the original ending. I very much feel it's the right ending. I will, however, continue to try to re-write. If I find something satisfactory, I will go ahead and post it as an "alternate ending"._

_Thanks again for reading. :)  
><em>


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